Jana Harris
Bio: Jana Harris teaches creative writing at the University of Washington and at the Writer’s Workshop in Seattle. She is editor and founder of Switched-on Gutenberg. Her most recent publications are You Haven’t Asked About My Wedding or What I Wore; Poems of Courtship on the American Frontier (University of Alaska Press) and the memoir, Horses Never Lie About Love (Simon & Schuster). Other poetry books include Oh How Can I Keep on Singing, Voices of Pioneer Women (Ontario); The Dust of Everyday Life, An Epic Poem of the Northwest (Sasquatch); and We Never Speak of It, Idaho-Wyoming Poems 1889-90 (Ontario ) all are available online from Open Road Press as are her two novels, Alaska (Harper & Row) and The Pearl of Ruby City (St. Martin’s). She lives with her husband on a farm in the Cascades.
Enfance Bordeaux
(Rosa Bonheur, b. 1822)
Maman said the sun set over the river like a ripe plumon the day I was born.When I cut teeth early Nurse spoon-fed me creamfrom our best cow, one she tendedherself, la vache licking my head as if I were her calf.
Never a time when I wasn’t crazy for animals, the scentof stables irresistible. As soon as I could walk and holda stick, I sketched hens and chicks in warm barnyard dust--a pig, goat, kittens.But the alphabet, French, spelling, wore Mere out. I had no patiencefor words unless they madeanimal pictures, just as I had no patience for that steamboat, its wake lickinghungrily at the mud of the Garonne;each day Pere promised it would bring my next baby brother. Mere confined in a room paperedwith blue lambs, I splattered walls with handfuls of Papa’s paints high up as I could reach(his cherished reds, my favorite).I sat Monsieur Punch poupee in a chair, and drew his portrait.Appropriating scissors, I cut paper dolls –a shepherd, his sheep, dog, a tree. Later‘Dodore in a cradle beside her,Maman played harpsicord as tearsleaked from her eyes because Nurse cuddled me like her own.
Unbeknownst to his children, upstairsPapa packed his trunk for Paris where an artist could make his reputation--where the dust would have an acrid scent, the bread saltless, the aira grizzled, mind-numbing slate.And the animals? Barely a sprinkling of cows, no sheep, horses onlyin harness pulling cannon,carriages seized by partisans, and slow flat carts bearing away the dead. To keep me occupiedPere would buy me a finch in a bell-shaped cage, a chipmunkin a petite commode. StraightawayI would grant their liberty to join the subversion in the streetswhile I waited, stick in hand,to sketch on cobbles mired in sweat and ferric and the stain of Bordeaux plums.
Never a time when I wasn’t crazy for animals, the scentof stables irresistible. As soon as I could walk and holda stick, I sketched hens and chicks in warm barnyard dust--a pig, goat, kittens.But the alphabet, French, spelling, wore Mere out. I had no patiencefor words unless they madeanimal pictures, just as I had no patience for that steamboat, its wake lickinghungrily at the mud of the Garonne;each day Pere promised it would bring my next baby brother. Mere confined in a room paperedwith blue lambs, I splattered walls with handfuls of Papa’s paints high up as I could reach(his cherished reds, my favorite).I sat Monsieur Punch poupee in a chair, and drew his portrait.Appropriating scissors, I cut paper dolls –a shepherd, his sheep, dog, a tree. Later‘Dodore in a cradle beside her,Maman played harpsicord as tearsleaked from her eyes because Nurse cuddled me like her own.
Unbeknownst to his children, upstairsPapa packed his trunk for Paris where an artist could make his reputation--where the dust would have an acrid scent, the bread saltless, the aira grizzled, mind-numbing slate.And the animals? Barely a sprinkling of cows, no sheep, horses onlyin harness pulling cannon,carriages seized by partisans, and slow flat carts bearing away the dead. To keep me occupiedPere would buy me a finch in a bell-shaped cage, a chipmunkin a petite commode. StraightawayI would grant their liberty to join the subversion in the streetswhile I waited, stick in hand,to sketch on cobbles mired in sweat and ferric and the stain of Bordeaux plums.
In an Era of Uncertain Weather,
It Falls to Mlle. Natalie Micas to Teach Fledgling Swallows to Fly
(Rosa Bonheur, near Fontainebleau, 1879-80)
Mademoiselle and I agree,all nature gone awry: January, every bit of forest wood torn and mutilated. Not a birch standing,oaks covered with icicles bentto the ground. Train accidents—frozen switches.The cannon-shot of falling icethe loudest in memory.
In my studio, a starved wren lands on the sill, eats dead flies, warms herselfatop my paintings. My bedroom festoonedin cages. With a music box I coach the starvelings to sing. At dawn the saved greet me in their own tongue. I sketch them as they eat asparagus seed.
Like Mlle. Micas, I was bornbefore railroads, steamships a new invention. We ponder what has vanquished the mild weather of our girlhoods.First, the fatal burning of Gaul’s ancient forests, then the getting of coal, its great consumption, the factories, domestic chimneys all begin with fire and end in smoke, matter changed to spirit has altered the weight of the globe. Howis the earth to regain its balance?
A cold spring bleeds into insupportable heat; summer, our liquid parts run away leaving only bones. Nights too hot for sleeping, too hot evenfor sketching the memory of rain.Worse, in the menagerie barn, fledglings fall from their mud cup nests.Natalie collects truffle-sized chicks,places beaks-and-bright-eyes on wool tufts in the raspberry canes. Overhead the flock swarms, swoops, drops insects into gaping mouths while Mademoiselle patrols, calling:cats away, hawks away, crows...Before nightfall the Great Nana gathers her chicks in a wicker hamper, placed in the loft. Her day framed: up at first light, truffle tots into the open air; one by one she lifts each to a branchof the espaliered pear. It launches itself, but can’t flap long or far and, fetched from the dust, the Great Nana replaces it on its perch;come night, again the hamper.
Finally the last fledgling of August;a low branch, a higher branch,his wings clap-clap to the fence. Hours later and still there, she fetches him back to the pear, he falls, she finds him at sundown; five days of fetch, lift off, flap, fall, fetch again. On a morning whena vague possibility of rain scented the air, God—in whom I do not believe—Be Praised!He rose, high, higher over the barn, the hay field,the menagerie pens of hindand horse and sheep. Hundredsof swallows congregating in a mad choreography of flight, the skywaya perfect marriage of matter and spirit.But, Mademoiselle ponders, will her last chargemake it to the Arabian Sea? The question threatens to encage her in melancholy.
At dusk, we lie in tor-grass, stare at the heavens awash in swallow spinand dive; she points up, uttering small round sounds,“Is that him? Is that him?”A massive onion-of-a-moon rises shining indifferently. I spread the flat of my hand on Natalie’s chest, feelthe drum of her magnificent heart.By schooling the starving to sing and fledglings to fly, the Great Nana and I, for thirty years, have worked in concert to counterbalance the changing weight of the earth. ***
In my studio, a starved wren lands on the sill, eats dead flies, warms herselfatop my paintings. My bedroom festoonedin cages. With a music box I coach the starvelings to sing. At dawn the saved greet me in their own tongue. I sketch them as they eat asparagus seed.
Like Mlle. Micas, I was bornbefore railroads, steamships a new invention. We ponder what has vanquished the mild weather of our girlhoods.First, the fatal burning of Gaul’s ancient forests, then the getting of coal, its great consumption, the factories, domestic chimneys all begin with fire and end in smoke, matter changed to spirit has altered the weight of the globe. Howis the earth to regain its balance?
A cold spring bleeds into insupportable heat; summer, our liquid parts run away leaving only bones. Nights too hot for sleeping, too hot evenfor sketching the memory of rain.Worse, in the menagerie barn, fledglings fall from their mud cup nests.Natalie collects truffle-sized chicks,places beaks-and-bright-eyes on wool tufts in the raspberry canes. Overhead the flock swarms, swoops, drops insects into gaping mouths while Mademoiselle patrols, calling:cats away, hawks away, crows...Before nightfall the Great Nana gathers her chicks in a wicker hamper, placed in the loft. Her day framed: up at first light, truffle tots into the open air; one by one she lifts each to a branchof the espaliered pear. It launches itself, but can’t flap long or far and, fetched from the dust, the Great Nana replaces it on its perch;come night, again the hamper.
Finally the last fledgling of August;a low branch, a higher branch,his wings clap-clap to the fence. Hours later and still there, she fetches him back to the pear, he falls, she finds him at sundown; five days of fetch, lift off, flap, fall, fetch again. On a morning whena vague possibility of rain scented the air, God—in whom I do not believe—Be Praised!He rose, high, higher over the barn, the hay field,the menagerie pens of hindand horse and sheep. Hundredsof swallows congregating in a mad choreography of flight, the skywaya perfect marriage of matter and spirit.But, Mademoiselle ponders, will her last chargemake it to the Arabian Sea? The question threatens to encage her in melancholy.
At dusk, we lie in tor-grass, stare at the heavens awash in swallow spinand dive; she points up, uttering small round sounds,“Is that him? Is that him?”A massive onion-of-a-moon rises shining indifferently. I spread the flat of my hand on Natalie’s chest, feelthe drum of her magnificent heart.By schooling the starving to sing and fledglings to fly, the Great Nana and I, for thirty years, have worked in concert to counterbalance the changing weight of the earth. ***