Dead Man’s Float

I’m writing a poem because it’s useless.

No money to be made, no publishers to court.

No student cruelty or apathy to stew.

A consequence of Jim Harrison calling to me

from a shelf of Crestone’s free-box.

That’s how it happens. Drive-by book-nappings.

I’m assuming the posture, as his title instructs,

on this first day home from the classroom.

Only two months to heal, put out new shoots

from withered roots. Broke, we begged for a lake.

They gave us a blue plastic kiddie pool.

Here’s my best dead man’s float.

Jim’s black letters serve as seeds. I scrawl

in a book Laurie collaged, faux antiqued pages,

her brush dipped in brown ink and dragged

across scalloped edges, spine bound with string.

My writing is how she reads me, dead as she is,

how she speaks to me, filters through Jim,

fellow Montanan. Huskily, surly, smoke curled.

Sit on the couch, Rachel. Read him, she says.

Float with me. Watch clouds roll in like motherships

over that flat peak, come for you like rain, winter,

instructions for Liberation in the Great Between

whispered in your ear. Notice the warble

of chickens through your walls, the rise and fall

of your dog’s chest. Sip coffee. Uninstall media.

And, for chrissake, stop thinking about teaching.