Waiting

There are no calls from the outside.

Miracles are the perversity of literature.

We should know that by now.

Only that these never-revealed connections of things

lead us oddly on. Caesar’s legions

entering Greenland’s ice, the scout far in front

wanting to do battle where there are

no enemies,

never were any enemies.

*

From “The Shape of the Journey: New and Collected Poems”

by Jim Harrison (Copper Canyon: 466 pp., $30)