Poem: "The Not" by Pamela Harrison

The Not

Not getting what you want,
the wanting
burning a bright hole
in your survival,
is a kind of fortune,
is it not? 

So like the lone crow
poking through the snow
of the buried field, feeling
for anything, any rough patch
of fox kill, owl kill,
the wind-empty pods of meadow weeds. 

It’s the stabbing, insistent
search, the goading
at the given
that spreads your wings
and lofts you,
still ravenous, into the iron air.

LISTEN
Pamela Harrison reads "The Not"