Livingston Suite - Jim Harrison

[Lawrence Robinson]

Livingston Suite

Shorn of nature, 
here but in small supply, 
townspeople adore their dogs. 
Our dogs have never lived 
in a town. Neither have I 
since 1967. I adore 
the puzzlement of our dogs. 
Each morning I walk four blocks 
to this immense river, 
surprised that it’s still there, 
that it won’t simply disappear 
into the ground like the rest of us. 
In the burnt July air 
the strange cool odor 
of sprinkler water
creating its own little breeze 
in the Livingston Park 
where there are twelve rings for playing 
horseshoes built before the fathers of lies 
built the clouds above our heads.
In 1968 when I was first here 
there was a cool scent of pines 
and melting snow from the mountains 
carried by a southwind through the river’s 
canyon. The scent is still here, 
the sure fresh odor of the West.
A concert in the park on the 4th of July sponsored 
by the networks in New York. Someone named Sheryl Crow,
Hank Williams Junior not Senior, and my old favorite, 
Los Lobos. As a claustrophobe I can’t walk the four blocks
into the crowds but from my studio 
I can hear the Latino music wafting through maple 
trees, imagining I’m at our winter casita near Patagonia, 
Arizona, on the Mexican border, the music so much 
closer to love and death than our own, the heart
worn on the sleeve, the natural lament of flowers, the moon visible. Smiling skeletons are allowed to dance 
and the gods draw closer to earth, the cash registers 
drowned out in the flight of birds, the sound of water.

	- Jim Harrison
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