Gunnar Harding Poems

My brother's sitting high in the linden tree, the tall one
near the wall. He can't get down.
My sister has blond braids and a pink ribbon in her hair.
...

It isn't everyone who grew up in a psychiatric house
with a green sofa that reeked of neuroses
though the place was forever being aired out
...

We were here to defend this forest
and become a part of this green
that our tents and uniforms clumsily mimicked.
...

Not driving nails into the piano is the issue,
not setting fire to the curtains.
It's not a question of freedom from your upbringing
...

It's in our sleep we dance so well
through fields of towering cowslip.
It's in the era before Raphael
...

The sunshine dries into dust
in the brown-red fragrance from the Tabasco factory.
The furrows in his face, decades of stubble fields,
the truck tires' dry rubber lips in a time that isn't his,
...

Where the alphabet ends, the universe begins
with formlessness that casts the mind back
to the reader in which the sturdy cart-horse from the Ardennes
...

The smallest common denominator is a great sense of loss.
Dead deer dash past.
The green hunter loses sight of his quarry.
...