Category: Jeffrey Harrison

by Jeffrey Harrison

These days between late spring

and early summer are like paintings

already hanging but not yet finished

the week before the Summer Exhibition

(once the custom at the Royal Academy),

still waiting for their final touches

and smelling of linseed and turpentine:

everything fresh, the paint still wet,

the taut sky primed with a wash of blue.

The Siberian irises, not yet

unfurling, their buds still tight,

look like paintbrushes saturated

with ultramarine; buttercups

spatter the meadow with yellow.

From an arbor of scribbled vines,

blossom-clusters of wisteria

dangle, glistening with last night’s rain.

A wood thrush calls in liquid trills

from deep within the background’s

mass of pale, soft greens. The air

chills while the sun warms the scene.

May these days remain unfinished

a while longer, with no artist

jostling his way in

to apply some final flourish

or a coat of varnish that will

only darken. Let the bumblebee

fumble among the blossoms.

from Between LakesFind more by Jeffrey Harrison at the library

Copyright © 2020 Jeffrey Harrison
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Four Way Books.

by Jeffrey Harrison

(“Madonna and Child with Two Angels,”

Piero della Francesca)

For half an hour we had the painting

mostly to ourselves,

and the longer we stood there

taking it in together,

the more the people drifting

around us seemed to disappear.

We spoke quietly

when we spoke at all,

as though trying not to discomfort

the Mother and Child, though they

seemed imperturbable,

inhabiting a world apart,

along with the two angels

who stood behind them on either side,

vigilant, looking in different

directions, like (I said)

celestial Secret Service agents.

The one in the blue robe, head globed

as though in a space helmet,

fixed us in his gaze and seemed

to be guarding a back room

that you said looked inviting,

illuminated by a slanting beam

of tangible sunlight.

I couldn’t help remarking

that the basket of gauze cloth

behind the other angel

looked like a pie topped with meringue

placed on an upper shelf to cool,

beyond the reach of mortals.

We marveled at the tenderness

of Mary’s delicate fingers

cradling the feet of the Child,

who appeared to weigh

several pounds less

than if he’d been part of our world.

He shared his mother’s

pensive serenity,

had the face of an old man

he would never live to be,

and wore a coral pendant

like a branching artery.

He held his right hand up

as if to call for silence.

But we were done with talking.

It was just the two of us

and the four of them

in that unearthly stillness.

from Between LakesFind more by Jeffrey Harrison at the library

Copyright © 2020 Jeffrey Harrison
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Four Way Books.

by Jeffrey Harrison

As usual, when I begin

I feel as though I don’t

know what I’m doing

and have to learn it all

over again, and sure enough

on my very first pane

the size and shape of a page,

the blade of the putty knife

pulls the ribbon of soft

glazing compound right

off the strip of trim I’m

trying to press it into.

I start again, and then

again, and eventually

get into a rhythm, making

small adjustments as I go

and taking pleasure in

the way the knife blade

compresses the putty

into a smooth bevel

while its sharp edge cuts

a clean line against the glass,

the excess curling away;

and I move from pane

to pane, still making

mistakes, of course, but

emending them as best

I can while trying not

to lose my focus, trying

to get into a groove

and stay there. And when

I’m done, I wipe away

my smudged fingerprints

so my labor doesn’t show

and the window glistens

with the day’s reflection.

from Between LakesFind more by Jeffrey Harrison at the library

Copyright © 2020 Jeffrey Harrison
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Four Way Books.

by Jeffrey Harrison

was alive: small creatures aglow and crawling

one after the other down each tall green blade—

thousands of them bending at all angles—

along the quaggy edge of the salt marsh cove

the three of us had paddled our kayaks into . . .

luminous bits of green-gold sliding down

the myriad stalks, but inside them, as if the marsh

were sucking down the warm light through

innumerable living straws, drop after drop

in a wavering, steady, mesmerizing rhythm,

and for once no explanation we could think of

(that unseen ripples on the cove’s mirrory stillness

focused the late sunlight in eely ribbons

that scrolled down the blades of spartina)

could diminish the marvel we had chanced upon,

and we gave up trying to explain it, gave ourselves

to it—as if we had ingested some hallucinogen

that opened our eyes to what was there all along

but had gone unnoticed, each of us in our own pod

of selfhood floating on the fetid, primordial cove

now held together in awed suspension by these grasses

aswarm with lights that also flowed in waves through us,

wanting it not to stop, asking ourselves why

we’d never seen what had been going on for eons,

asking how we could keep it, knowing we could not.

from Between LakesFind more by Jeffrey Harrison at the library

Copyright © 2020 Jeffrey Harrison
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Four Way Books.

by Jeffrey Harrison

(Aix-en-Provence)

Beyond the French doors leading out

to this fourth-floor rental’s balcony, open sky

above a pre-Cubist arrangement of

ochre walls, blue-gray shutters both open

and closed, and terra cotta roofs—all studded

with innumerable accessories and doodads:

small chimneys gathered in familial groups

and wearing metal caps, a Celtic cross

and two stone urns atop the church;

a gold ball below a flag-like weathervane

at the apex of a pyramidal tower,

the pointy, floppy tops of three cypresses

projecting up like elf hats; satellite dishes,

the skeletal metal wings of TV antennas,

and, best of all, the shiny cylindrical

vents whose tops, spinning like pinwheels,

flash festively with sunlight—all these

conduits and valves and instruments

that in one way or another mediate

between worlds, between a sky saturated

with sunlight and the streets below, noisy

with the cries of children on their way to school

and the clang of workers in blue jumpsuits

assembling scaffolding against the wall

opposite, keeping it all from falling apart.

from Between LakesFind more by Jeffrey Harrison at the library

Copyright © 2020 Jeffrey Harrison
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Four Way Books.

by Jeffrey Harrison

I wish I knew what happened to the photograph

of my father and me that my younger brother took

when we were in our twenties, maybe

still in college, home for Thanksgiving.

We were helping our father cut firewood,

a ritual since we were boys, though back then

we didn’t do much more than tag along.

Maybe Dad and I were already out in the woods,

and Jeremy was catching up,

listening for the chainsaw to find us.

Maybe we were gathering the logs

and loading them into the back of the Jeep

as he approached with his camera,

thinking he’d surprise us—

but Dad and I spontaneously turned

and in unison gave him the finger

with our hands encumbered by work gloves

just at the instant he snapped the shutter.

My brother printed the photo and gave it to me,

a black-and-white five-by-seven—

too big for an album, and never framed.

I haven’t seen that photograph in years.

I’ve looked for it but can’t find it anywhere.

Maybe some day I’ll open a book

and it will fall out, surprising me once more

in the way it catches my father and me

united in a moment of buffoonery,

our smiles showing through our phony glares.

from Between Lakes
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Copyright © 2020 Jeffrey Harrison

Used with the permission of Four Way Books.

by Jeffrey Harrison

“Absent one, how I miss you on this shore

that conjures you and fades . . . ”

—Eugenio Montale

A wall topped with shards of broken bottles

runs along the lane that winds up the hill

to this house above the Ligurian Sea

not far from where the great poet lived.

One of his lizards visits my balcony.

And that mysterious “you” of his,

during my time here, has become you.

I’ve looked for you among the lemon trees,

in waves flashing through canopies of pines,

in upper windows fluttering with sheets,

and on a small beach below rocky cliffs,

its gray stones crisscrossed with white lines.

And there I found these tiny, glinting beads

of colored glass hidden among the pebbles—

like drops of honey, and some between, the color

of your eyes, and two or three the pale blue

of inlets where foam has clouded the water.

from Between Lakes
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Copyright © 2020 Jeffrey Harrison

Used with the permission of Four Way Books.

by Jeffrey Harrison

Christopher and Helen, our new expatriate friends,

meet us at their favorite winery

where they fill their plastic jerry cans from hoses

exactly like the ones at gas stations,

as though they’re planning to go back home to Aix

and treat their lawnmower to a nice red.

Instead, they take us in their forest green Peugeot

to the home of their old friend Brigitte

in a village at the foot of Mont Ventoux—

actually, not a village, Brigitte corrects me,

but “un hameau,” a hamlet. The French

are exacting about such distinctions, though Brigitte

has a kind, mischievous smile. Back in the car,

we tear along a series of rutted, stony roads

that web the mountainside, with Brigitte

directing Christopher, “à droite, à gauche, encore à gauche,”

until we come to a grove of pines, cedars, and oaks,

where she says the mushrooms are hidden.

We fan out under the trees, searching the slope,

while Brigitte, looking elfin in her orange hoodie,

waves a stick like a wand, pokes at the dried pine needles

or the dead leaves under wild boxwood bushes,

and sings, “I think there are some over here,”

like a mother leading her toddlers toward Easter eggs.

We laugh and follow after her, cutting the stems

with a tarnished knife she lends us, warning

“Faites attention,” because the blade is sharp.

And gradually we fill our plastic shopping bags

with gnarled orange caps, stained green,

which, much later, back in the States, I learn

are called Lactarius deliciosus or

orange-latex milky, like a shade of paint,

the field guide commenting “edible, although

not as good as the name deliciosus suggests”—

but we already suspect that (they look awful),

and we’ll later unload most of ours on

Christopher and Helen who clearly think of them

as a delicacy . . . but right now we’re

just hunting for them among the sunspots

on the forest floor, filling our bags,

and calling through the trees, the whole afternoon

gathering into the giddy moment

that Brigitte keeps calling us back to.

from Between Lakes
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Copyright © 2020 Jeffrey Harrison

Used with the permission of Four Way Books.

by Jeffrey Harrison

The way it turned everything blue

even bluer

like the north wind

on days like today

deepening the lake

to cobalt

and bringing fall

a little closer—

an old slide found

in a desk drawer

held up to the light,

moving the past

into the present,

into a day

too blue to last.

from Between Lakes
Find more by Jeffrey Harrison at the library

Copyright © 2020 Jeffrey Harrison

Used with the permission of Four Way Books.