Far.

Chatham, April, n/d

NORTHERN MICHIGAN

On this back road the land
has the juice taken out of it:

stump fences surrounding nothing
worth their tearing down

by a deserted filling station
a Veedol sign, the rusted hulk

of a a Frazer, "live bait"
on a battered tin.

                        A barn
with half a tobacco ad
owns the greenness of a manure
pile

a half-moon pivy
a rope swinging from an elm.  A

collapsed henhouse, a pump
with the handle up

the orchard with wild tangled branches.

In the far corner of a pasture,
in the shadow of the woodlot
a herd of twenty deer:
                                   three bucks

are showing off --
they mump in turn across the fence,
flanks arch and twist to get higher
in the twilight
as the light filters
through the woods.

Jim Harrison