SKULL  by Jim Harrison from "Songs of Unreason" (Copper Canyon Press) sent to me by Laura Furman who calls it "a rugged poem."


You can't write the clear biography
of the aches and pains inside your skull.
Will I outlive my passport expiration?
Will the knots of the past beat me to death
like limber clubs, the Gordian knots
that never will be untied big as bowling balls?
Maybe not. Each time I row the river
for six hours or so the innards of my skull
slightly change shape. Left alone knots
can unravel in the turbulence of water.
It isn't for me to understand why loved ones
died. My skull can't withstand
the Tao of the mighty river carrying me along
as if I were still and the mountains capped by clouds were rushing past.
After we submerge do we rise again in another form?
Meanwhile I speculate on the seven pills
I must take each day to stay alive.
I ask each one, "Are we doing your job?"
The only answer I've found is the moving
water whose music is without a single lyric.