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Classic and Contemporary Poetry


GEO-BESTIARY: 3 by JAMES HARRISON

Poet Analysis

First Line: THAT DEW-WET GLISTENING WILD IRIS
Last Line: THE EARTH ACCEPTS US BOTH WITHOUT COMMENT.

That dew-wet glistening wild iris
doesn't know where it comes from,
what drove the green fuse, the poet said,
up and out into the flowering I see
in the dank flat of the creek, my eye
drawn there by a Virginia rail who keeps
disappearing as they do, unlike the flower
which stays exactly in the place the heron stands
every day, the flower no doubt fertilized
by heron shit, or deeper -- those rocky bones
my daughter found of the Jurassic lizard.
I said to the flower one brain-bleeding morning
that I don't know where I came from either
or where I'm going, such a banal statement
however true. O wild iris here today and soon gone,
the earth accepts us both without comment.



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