The James Hearst Digital Archive

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Survival [2]

Text of Poem

At the mercy of street
and creek, between them
a thin neck of land points
downstream. Patches of grass
attempt to cover its body and
one, two, three trees march
toward land’s end. Here at the
tip a sumach bush roots
its grip on the last of earth,
its ugly leaves held aloft
on trembling stems
wave like banner of survival.
And the triumph in the autumn when
the bush in red glory declares
a victory at no more roothold.

First Line
At the mercy of street
Original Pub Location
Original Publication Date
2017
Original Citation
Planting Red Geraniums: Discovered Poems of James Hearst. Final Thursday Press, 2017. 32.
Complete Poems
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Hearst Collections
Word Count
80
Manuscript

Permission to reproduce work from the James Hearst Papers has been granted by the Special Collections Department of the University of Iowa Libraries.

Poetic Form
open
Bibliographic Notes

Hearst published an entirely different poem with the same title, which is listed as "Survival [1]" on this archive.

Themes