“The world that used to nurse us
now keeps shouting insane instructions.
That’s why I ran to the woods.”
– Jim Harrison
Man, trees are crazy
Roots play taps, madness of light –
Know woe synthesis
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qbit 
Roots playing taps.. lol! Good imagery!
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“Man, trees are crazy.” Love the play here…
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I don’t know what kind of woods he ran to, but I bet they were nice safe woods with plumbing and pizza delivery.
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Ahahaha! Yes. Most probably.
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I somehow think me and Jim Harrison would not get on at all.
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Agreed, but somehow my argument with him has driven me to some of my favorite writing. Which I find interesting!
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I know what you mean. Maybe it’s that process of picking the bones out of it to find some sort of sense to what he says—the bones can be interesting 🙂
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Actually, he was a consummate outdoorsman, raised in northern Michigan. He lived for many years in Montana far, far from the madding crowd. He had a keen appreciation of the wilderness and a huge distaste for the stupidities of humankind — from both sides of the aisle.
I do these prompts because they are profoundly poetic and elicit poetry from fellow poets.
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Glad to hear that about his connection to the outdoors. It was hard to know it wasn’t the usual trope. Also glad to see your usage of “madding”!
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Look him up and read about him. You’d be surprised to find that most of his books are bought and read in France — not the U.S.
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I don’t mean to carp. The meaning of the quote often escapes me and I often don’t find it particularly poetic. We’re all different in what moves us.
There is no such thing as an ‘outdoorsman’ here, if by that you mean someone who can just get in a big off-roader and go and live in the wilds, shooting and trapping and growing food to eat, chopping down trees for firewood etc. There is no wilderness. It all belongs to someone. There are no woods to run away to.
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Montana, where Harrison lived, is larger than all of England, Scotland and Wales combined, with a population of 1M, LOL. Pretty much nothing *but* wilderness!
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Hard for us to imagine. It’s also hard for people with access to such a wild space to understand that the rest of us don’t.
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Yes, understood. As you’ve probably read a couple of times in my poems, I grew up in Colorado. While not as sparsely populated as Montana, still plenty of rugged wilderness. I remember the first time I visited the English countryside, I was like “Ohhh… That’s different”. But it was also so beautiful! I had grown up that natural beauty=”Overwhelming Majesty”. It was such a wonderful experience to learn how it could be soft, subtle, a work of care.
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France is quite a bit bigger than England and has a more thinly spread population, but everywhere that can be is farmed. No wilderness to speak of. But you’re right, it does have a charm that massive spaces don’t.
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France is beautiful too! My apologies, for some reason I though you lived in Great Britain.
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Anglophones generally live in an anglophone country. It’s an understandable mistake 🙂
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Then, perhaps you can’t know the context in which JH wrote. I often just take a word or a part of a line and run off down a track — and don’t care what he meant by it. If it required me understanding a poet’s writing to use their work for inspiration, Yeats would be a blank slate for me (Eliot doing Sanskrit is sometimes an easier read!).
Some of my family live on the edge of state and national forests. They know that a balance is required to keep the health of these places — something the people of Europe never bothered to consider. They hunt and eat what they kill. Partly because if they didn’t, the woods would be inundated with creatures who no longer are kept in check by predators. The same thing goes for the trees. A forest that’s properly managed is a healthy forest. Too many people go into tree-hugger mode and are willing to let the forests die from other things rather than allowing a sensible interaction between nature and humans. Not everyone is evil-minded. The big-footed statements of the “concerned” are part of the problems dividing people.
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I think you put your finger on the problem there when you say that we need to step in to keep a balance because there are no natural predators. Why are there no natural predators? Here foxes are classed as pests and can be shot at any time of the year. But without the foxes the same people who shoot the foxes complain there are too many rabbits. They let the deer and the wild boar proliferate so they can claim they damage crops and have to be culled. The hunters do more damage than the animals they’re hunting. I am always very sceptical when a hunter tells me he’s killing things to maintain a balance. The balance was there before we started messing with it; and the truth is hunters kill things not because they’re performing a public service, but because they enjoy it.
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Again, I caution that the broad brush spashes the innocent with the guilty. My experience with so-called environmentalists have been equally disheartening — but I’m mindful they are not representative of the whole (as I am an environmentalist). But I’m not unanimously green, because many so-called green initiatives are supported by the evil wealthy corporate types. Wind power is a menace to winged creatures. Electronic devices and electric automobiles are responsible for strip mining, polluted ground water and rivers, and the mining of the ocean floor off the coast of New Guinea (by the thermal vents, and who knows what species will cease to be because of it). I don’t believe in vilifying farmers or regulating them out of existence, because I know how stupid the men and women who make up our governments are (or at least can be). Your problem with foxes is due to the fact that the higher-chain predators are all gone. Ergo, humankind must fill in.
As for your European hunters… I have no personal knowledge with which to render an intelligent assessment. 🙂
Peace for now!
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I’m with you about big business interests in environmental issues. If there’s a buck to be made… But you have to start somewhere, use the ‘broad brush’ and make exceptions later, otherwise we’d never make any laws at all.
Foxes though are the end of the food chain here. We’ve never had bigger predators. The wolf was hunted to extinction 200 years ago and they never actively preyed on foxes, killed a few if they poached on their territory, but extremely rarely for food. Badgers will take cubs occasionally, but they are on the same pest list and are equally persecuted. Pest? It’s in the eye of the beholder, no science involved.
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Let’s stick to poetry here folks…
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Aw, you never want us to have any fun 🙂
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LOLOL!
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Trees play taps–love it.
I’m imaging a jazz riff going on in the background while someone reads this poem.
Like you and Jane, I’m not sure I’d get along with Jim, but he is pushing me a bit–at least on some days.
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Thanks. Yes.
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