Pursuit From Under Poem by James Dickey

Pursuit From Under

Rating: 3.2


Often, in these blue meadows,
I hear what passes for the bark of seals

And on August week ends the cold of a personal ice age
Comes up through my bare feet
Which are trying to walk like a boy's again
So that nothing on earth can have changed
On the ground where I was raised.

The dark grass here is like
The pads of mukluks going on and on

Because I once burned kerosene to read
Myself near the North Pole
In the journal of Arctic explorers
Found, years after death, preserved
In a tent, part of whose canvas they had eaten

Before the last entry.
All over my father's land

The seal holes sigh like an organ,
And one entry carries more terror
Than the blank page that signified death
In 1912, on the icecap.
It says that, under the ice,

The killer whale darts and distorts,
Cut down by the flawing glass

To a weasel's shadow,
And when, through his ceiling, he sees
Anything darker than snow
He falls away
To gather more and more force

From the iron depths of cold water,
His shadow dwindling

Almost to nothing at all, then charges
Straight up, looms up at the ice and smashes
Into it with his forehead
To splinter the roof, to isolate seal or man
On a drifting piece of the floe

Which he can overturn.
If you run, he will follow you

Under the frozen pane,
Turning as you do, zigzagging,
And at the most uncertain of your ground
Will shatter through, and lean,
And breathe frankly in your face

An enormous breath smelling of fish.
With the lungs staining your air

You know the unsaid recognition
Of which the explorers died:
They had been given an image
Of how the downed dead pursue us.
They knew, as they starved to death,

That not only in the snow
But in the family field

The small shadow moves,
And under the bare feet in the summer:
That somewhere the turf will heave,
And the outraged breath of the dead,
So long held, will form

Unbreathably around the living.
The cows low oddly here

As I pass, a small bidden shape
Going with me, trembling like foxfire
Under my heels and their hooves.
I shall write this by kerosene,
Pitch a tent in the pasture, and starve.

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Tom Allport 14 January 2017

life's adventures never end and danger she comes in many forms.

2 1 Reply
Bernard F. Asuncion 14 January 2017

Nice++++++++ thanks for sharing+++++++++

1 1 Reply
Edward Kofi Louis 14 January 2017

Structure! From under. Thanks for sharing this poem with us.

1 1 Reply
Edward Kofi Louis 14 January 2017

He will follow you. Thanks for sharing this poem with us.

1 1 Reply
Terry Craddock 14 January 2017

'And on August week ends the cold of a personal ice age Comes up through my bare feet Which are trying to walk like a boy's again So that nothing on earth can have changed On the ground where I was raised.' The second stanza sets up the title of the poem, the solid ground beneath bare feet, the solid permanence goes well with the later Arctic explorers hunted from below by killer whales, diving deep then swimming with power speed, smashing up to break ice to hunt relentless prey on the ice floes; again a contrast to the slow cruel impersonal death by starvation in the tents by the explorers starving to death, knowing they are dying of starvation, with nothing to eat, starked by another relentless killer death by starvation. A wonderful haunting contrast between the familiar friendly place born and the cold sharp bitter cruel place of death.

0 0 Reply
Susan Williams 14 January 2017

My word but this is a great poem. By the end of the first lines the reader knows he is in the presence of a great write.10

1 0 Reply
M Asim Nehal 14 January 2017

This is wonderful poem, Thanks for sharing.

1 0 Reply
Ratnakar Mandlik 14 January 2017

Heartiest Congrats on the modern poem of the Day.

0 0 Reply
Gangadharan Nair Pulingat 14 January 2017

Nature's adverse conditions and human life so interesting poem.

0 0 Reply
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James Dickey

James Dickey

Atlanta, Georgia
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