New Poem (suppositions)

Suppositions On A Book And Splake
Jim Harrison, "Theory & Practice of Rivers"
a gift from tks this morning


published in 1986
hard covers and pages
stiff with age.
some stains on front
and back--they look
like coffee dropped
at table reading sessions,
the demon bean
pushing splake on
through a midnight tussle
with his emerging
newest self--.
phone numbers written
on the plain white cover.
$8.95 mysteriously
boxed low down, a
declaration in huge
pen hand, ROBINS
IN TOWN and something
unreadable beneath--
he wrote it fast, perhaps
while on the telephone--
no scratch pad, no free
hand to stop the book
from wobbling with
his pen hand's pushing
motions--.
inside, passages
of harrison underlined
in yellow magic marker,
and last page, notes
on meditation practice,
which i didn't know
he ever tried,
with wise reflection:
"past doesn't/ propel
present/ unless alibi."
that's true! these moments
of the great evolver
caught forever, at least
until this book turns
to dust, preserved
like the footprints left
by me in unset concrete
on the Estate where i
grew up, still visible
today, though everyone
who belonged to that
world, including me,
died many years ago.