Jim Harrison: A Dog on a Short Chain

"Barking"

The moon comes up

The moon goes down

This is to inform you

that I did not die young

Age swept past me

But I caught up.

Spring has begun here and each day

Brings new birds up from Mexico.

Yesterday I got a call from the outside

world but I said no in thunder.

I was a dog on a short chain

And now there's no chain.

- Jim Harrison 2009

The writer, poet, angler, bird-shooter, dog lover, and gourmand Jim Harrison has died.

He drank massive gulps from the fire hydrant of life.

You can drown from such activity. 

He didn't.

Old age got him.

Even if we are lucky, it will get us all.

• A prolific writer, Harrison lost his left eye as a child to a girl wielding a broken bottle.  


• He lost his mother and sister to a car wreck when he was 20. 


• He wrote Legends of the Fall in only 9 days.


• He lived to hunt and fish, but decided he did not like to kill mammals.


• He was married for more than 50 years.


• When asked by Esquire magazine, what he'd learned in old age, he replied: "You end up missing your dogs."

“Death steals everything except our stories.”