Jane
Was With Me
by Marvin
Bell
This is Michael Carey for Voices from the Prairie a weekly sampling from the rich soil of Iowa’s literary tradition. Today’s poem is from Marvin Bell of Iowa City Iowa’s first Poet Laureate. His poem is entitled "Jane Was With Me." It concerns the killing of a wounded animal to put it out of its misery. Over the years I have found that one of the things the farm and living in the country puts you up very close to is life and its sustenenance, and when it does, it brings you very close to death as well. I think this poem has to do with that and how love is the secret strength that, in spite of all, helps us live with open hearts and open minds -- embracing everything.
Jane Was With Me
Jane was with me
the day the rain dropped a squirrel like that.
An upside-down embrace,
a conical explosion from the sky,
a thick flowering of sudden water –
whatever it was,
the way it happened is
that first the trees grew a little,
and then they played music
and breathed songs and applauded themselves,
and that made the squirrel
surrender to nothing but the beauty
of a wet tree
about to shake its upper body like the devil.
And of course, of course,
he went out on that tree just as far as he could
when things were not so beautiful
and that was it: hard onto the roof of our car
before he could set his toes.
The flat whack of the body.
He lay in the street breathing and bleeding
until I could get back,
and then he looked me in the eye exactly.
Pasted to the concrete by his guts,
he couldn’t lift, or leave, or live.
And so I brought the car and put its right tire
across his head. If in between
the life part and the death part,
there is another part,
a time of near-death,
we have come to know its length and its look
exactly – in this life always near death.
But there’s something else.
Jane was with me.
After the rain, the trees were prettier yet.
And if I were a small animal with a wide tail,
I would trust them too. Especially
if Jane were with me.
"Jane Was With Me" by Marvin Bell originally published in Drawn
by Stones, by Earth, by Things That Have Been in the Fire by Atheneum also
in Nightworks: Poems 1962-2000 published by Copper Canyon Press.
For Voices from the Prairie and Humanities Iowa, this is Michael Carey hoping you continue to hear the music blooming all around you.
Biography
Poet and essayist, Marvin Bell grew up on rural Long Island outside New York City. He has taught at the Writers’ Workshop in Iowa City since 1965. At present he divides his time between Iowa City and Port Townsend, Washington. The latest of his seventeen books is Nightworks: Poems 1962-2000, Poetry for a Midsummer’s Night, and Ardor: The Book of the Dead Man, Vol.2. He has received many literary honors including the 1994 Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Lamont Award from the Academy of American Poets, both Guggenheim and NEA fellowships, and senior Fulbright Appointments to Yugoslavia and Australia. He was one of a group of distinguished poets to read at The White House during the Carter presidency. In the year 2000 the State of Iowa made him its first Poet Laureate.