I wrote this one one evening in a tent pitched at an old elk hunting camp when I was supposed to be writing my final paper about wolf predation on elk and bison. Oops. It got done in the end though
Beyond these spiky spruce trees
there is nothing: the earth falls off there,
like in “The Neverending Story”
when places kept turning up as air.
There is nothing but this porous here
we inhabit: these sticky geraniums,
this swamp grass brushing the bottoms
of my palms, this wind whistling
through its teeth, the dead tree spires
on the hillside that have stood
these twenty years since the fires.
This lake, with a girl padding
across a spiky log bridge.
These wild strawberries,
runners spreading red across
dusty hillside, sweet gems nestled
in moist pockets at the base of trees.
We comb our fingers through the leaves
to find berries beneath. Wind combs
our sitting figures on the hillside, reminds
us of our inner bear. Barely beneath
the surface lurks this creature:
walking on logs, carefully placing soft paws;
snatching life from mountain streams
and carrying it away in its jaws;
combing hillsides for the reward
cubs (of all ages and species) like.
Wind washes through my porous bones,
my porous flesh, my window-self.
Flung open. Myself removed of self.
Consciousness falls like a husk
to the gentle hands of the wind:
like clothes falling to the floor,
like the awestruck thought
before all thought is erased:
could anything, possibly, be better?
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Order Carnivora
Note: I still want to edit this one so that it feels more like a poem and less like a lesson. Hmmm. Unsure how to do this
Order Carnivora. Caro, flesh, +
vorare, to devour. From the
house cat to the walrus
to the grizzly—ursus horribilis—
“once found through the lower 48,
now confined to wilderness
areas.” I am glad I will
not run into one, yet still
feel bad we permanently attached
“horribilis” to their names
(and of course also hunted them
nearly to extinction.)
I had a teacher once
who liked to go to northern Canada
and hide in a wooden shelter and
watch the grizzlies eat and
poop and walk around and
sometimes charge at each other.
It always seemed like courting
disaster to me—but I admired
his pursuit of nature in the
raw, not sliced into islands
of habitat, or scrambled
by repatriation programs that
required airlifting huge,
stunned mammals to some
godforsaken place in North
Dakota where they would
be continually watched and
encouraged to have sex,
not for pleasure, just to
reproduce the species.
And even though Jim experienced
nature in the raw, most bears
don’t. Most are stuck in a
3,500 square mile museum
where people can go
and ogle them from the road,
where they get shot if they cross
the imaginary lines
we’ve drawn. Their park
is part refuge and part cage.
In the Absarokas, though,
you are on their turf.
Greg told us:
Walk loudly,
stay in the light of day,
sing when you’re going into
dark stands of whitebark pine.
Pay attention in scree fields,
that’s where they come
to turn over the flat stones
and lick up moths by the thousands.
If you’re walking down a trail
And you smell a fresh kill,
just turn around.
I weigh my caution
my soft body
my first time thinking
like prey
against the tyranny
of roads and ranches.
In the currency
of species survival,
What is one sheep gone?
One cow?
We’ve been taught: human life
is the most sacred thing there is.
The lives we guard with barbed-wire
fences, second only to our own.
We have to protect them from
the bears of our childhood nightmares,
with weapons if need be.
But the thing is: in the wilderness,
you don’t carry guns.
We make our own rules in our domain:
our houses, ranches, towns.
In the wilderness I learned
to tread lightly on the earth,
knowing we are light and fragile things—
beings made of air
compared to grizzlies’ bulk,
their momentum,
the 1800 pounds of pressure
per square inch
held between their jaws.
Order Carnivora. Caro, flesh, +
vorare, to devour. From the
house cat to the walrus
to the grizzly—ursus horribilis—
“once found through the lower 48,
now confined to wilderness
areas.” I am glad I will
not run into one, yet still
feel bad we permanently attached
“horribilis” to their names
(and of course also hunted them
nearly to extinction.)
I had a teacher once
who liked to go to northern Canada
and hide in a wooden shelter and
watch the grizzlies eat and
poop and walk around and
sometimes charge at each other.
It always seemed like courting
disaster to me—but I admired
his pursuit of nature in the
raw, not sliced into islands
of habitat, or scrambled
by repatriation programs that
required airlifting huge,
stunned mammals to some
godforsaken place in North
Dakota where they would
be continually watched and
encouraged to have sex,
not for pleasure, just to
reproduce the species.
And even though Jim experienced
nature in the raw, most bears
don’t. Most are stuck in a
3,500 square mile museum
where people can go
and ogle them from the road,
where they get shot if they cross
the imaginary lines
we’ve drawn. Their park
is part refuge and part cage.
In the Absarokas, though,
you are on their turf.
Greg told us:
Walk loudly,
stay in the light of day,
sing when you’re going into
dark stands of whitebark pine.
Pay attention in scree fields,
that’s where they come
to turn over the flat stones
and lick up moths by the thousands.
If you’re walking down a trail
And you smell a fresh kill,
just turn around.
I weigh my caution
my soft body
my first time thinking
like prey
against the tyranny
of roads and ranches.
In the currency
of species survival,
What is one sheep gone?
One cow?
We’ve been taught: human life
is the most sacred thing there is.
The lives we guard with barbed-wire
fences, second only to our own.
We have to protect them from
the bears of our childhood nightmares,
with weapons if need be.
But the thing is: in the wilderness,
you don’t carry guns.
We make our own rules in our domain:
our houses, ranches, towns.
In the wilderness I learned
to tread lightly on the earth,
knowing we are light and fragile things—
beings made of air
compared to grizzlies’ bulk,
their momentum,
the 1800 pounds of pressure
per square inch
held between their jaws.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Hannibal and the Elephants
Loxodonta africana
are more difficult to tame
than their Asian cousins,
but the ancient Carthiginians
and Romans did it, and used them
in their armies.
Ploughed over the Alps, white
as salt, to arrive in the morning light
to the city’s disbelieving occupants.
The giants stood in silence,
ears flapping like leaves,
feet planted on familiar city streets.
The people of the city
had never seen them before
and for the first moments
could not breathe. Snatches
of description had reached them—
beasts with teeth embedded
in their heads—the listeners
imagined a grisly mosaic
of canines and molars studding
the animals’ faces. “Long flexible noses”
conjured up a sort of Pinnochio.
At “the size of a house
and feet big as dinner plates”
they just laughed and dismissed
the rumors as fancy.
So nothing could have prepared
them for that moment when
the unimaginable materialized,
corporeal, before them.
They should have been afraid
but their bodies were filled
brimful with wonder. In the stillness
the peoples’ knocking hearts
were not betrayed by trembling hands
or knees. The only thing that shook
was the elephants’ ears in the breeze.
The silence stretched
in the yellow light.
Finally a man here or there
realized that the moment
had become elastic,
infinitely long. And began
to breathe again.
It was then that the elephants charged.
Beautifully curling trunks
slapped around columns,
grasping, ripping them down.
Majestic heads swung
side to side, parting the sea of people
with two white swords.
And the screaming. Through dust clouds
raised by feet falling as falling trees.
Trumpeting—what a word—
fanfare, bugles and brass,
maybe even drums.
The people keening.
are more difficult to tame
than their Asian cousins,
but the ancient Carthiginians
and Romans did it, and used them
in their armies.
Ploughed over the Alps, white
as salt, to arrive in the morning light
to the city’s disbelieving occupants.
The giants stood in silence,
ears flapping like leaves,
feet planted on familiar city streets.
The people of the city
had never seen them before
and for the first moments
could not breathe. Snatches
of description had reached them—
beasts with teeth embedded
in their heads—the listeners
imagined a grisly mosaic
of canines and molars studding
the animals’ faces. “Long flexible noses”
conjured up a sort of Pinnochio.
At “the size of a house
and feet big as dinner plates”
they just laughed and dismissed
the rumors as fancy.
So nothing could have prepared
them for that moment when
the unimaginable materialized,
corporeal, before them.
They should have been afraid
but their bodies were filled
brimful with wonder. In the stillness
the peoples’ knocking hearts
were not betrayed by trembling hands
or knees. The only thing that shook
was the elephants’ ears in the breeze.
The silence stretched
in the yellow light.
Finally a man here or there
realized that the moment
had become elastic,
infinitely long. And began
to breathe again.
It was then that the elephants charged.
Beautifully curling trunks
slapped around columns,
grasping, ripping them down.
Majestic heads swung
side to side, parting the sea of people
with two white swords.
And the screaming. Through dust clouds
raised by feet falling as falling trees.
Trumpeting—what a word—
fanfare, bugles and brass,
maybe even drums.
The people keening.
Monday, July 27, 2009
a short one
Rain is good for thinking in,
sun is good for living in.
Mud is good for sinking in,
snow is good for drinking in.
Storms are good for loving in.
Breeze is good for hovering in
if you’re a dragonfly with time
to kill, when summer is
a-comin' in. Then, time’s
a drink of water that
refills itself day after day.
sun is good for living in.
Mud is good for sinking in,
snow is good for drinking in.
Storms are good for loving in.
Breeze is good for hovering in
if you’re a dragonfly with time
to kill, when summer is
a-comin' in. Then, time’s
a drink of water that
refills itself day after day.
spring semester poems
Balm of Night
A eulogy, after Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Youth should burn and rave, not fade away;
rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though at the last you must have known that night
was wrong, you could not peel the clinging dark away—
you leapt into that soft dark balm of night.
Once, you caught and sang the sun in flight.
You loved a girl who could draw any face
but still you leapt into that balm of night.
I did not know you well, but you could fight—
it was your signature. With words, with grace—
swift kicks, hands blurring in the evening light.
Your words suggested a firm grip on life.
You spoke to us of cosmos, Dao, the Way,
quietly insisting what was right.
Your music spoke as if from some great height.
Dark, vital chords, but you were miles away—
flamenco strains against the bonds of life.
You had to know someone would find your shell
turning slowly, dangling from that height,
would fall on to their knees and start to pray
for the first time in their remembered life.
Youth should rave and fight, not fade away.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light
when you leapt into that balm of night.
In-Between Waking and Sleeping
The edge of my exhaustion like the edge
of a storm cloud about to break. A spell
of warm fog and floating thoughts upwelling
on tides of emotion, raw ropes barely
Holding, about to fray. Enfolding
rational facts with dream colors, blunt thoughts
that have no words attached. My will: an old
boat, or mere raft—planks creaking like she
wants to go to sea. Between the slats
phosphorescence beckons: synapses flashing
neon signs: wish fulfillment—dreams are free.
Flashing like my mind is sending up flares—
because no one dares to live what they dream.
Whatever the cause, I cast off those taut
ropes, drift on the loping waves, raft lapped by
salt water, intimate in warm rain.
Leaving Season
Early summer leaving season
and the air sticks to me like wet cloth.
It wants to hold on to passing things.
Colors assault my eyes: fuchsia spikes, falling wisteria.
The air sticks to me like love lost.
I walk to the grocery store down crumbling southern roads--
colors assault my mind, sprawling violet across remaining time.
Buttercups Jackson Pollacked across the rugby field.
The sweet decay of crumbling southern roads,
the smooth grooves of same paths traveled many times.
Buttercups studding fields and the drinkable sky.
The light wind intimate and sweat everywhere my body folds.
The smooth groves of beech trees climbed many times.
I'm not searching, just letting sights fall into my eyes.
In windless air my body swims in sweat, my eyes in light.
On roads and fields, kind ghosts walk in the heat of day.
Sinking in honey, I fall into these sights.
I hold on to passing things with humid hands.
Ghost heat-mirages with friends' faces
walk off into summer, rippling.
That poem about mermaids
I don’t have a title for this one. It’s a sestina—a very strange form where the last words of each line repeat throughout the poem, in the different verses. Hence some very short lines and some very long ones. Also, I’m not sure how I feel about how prose-like it is. I mean, I like it. But I’m not sure if it’s a poem. Thoughts?
Also, a style thing: the lines that look like they're not supposed to wrap to the next line aren't supposed to. They're just too long to fit so I guess you just have to imagine them being on the line above. There might be a way to change the layout so they fit but I haven't found it yet.
Mermaids are at home in the rain.
Does rain rust dragon scales?
Every beautiful and strange thing, on sea
or land, is born with the gut-
feeling that, in time,
they’ll have to bear
a burden they can barely
carry. I used to love superheroes, who reigned
over us mortals with their timeless
stories. They scaled
impossible obstacles, gutted
countless villains (all to plant the seed
of peace in the world.) But I’ve never seen
such aggression, passion, or splashing water as when bears
attack during the salmon spawn. When I first gutted
a fish—took the insides out, threw the outsides away—it was rainy,
bittersweet: an intimate experience with reality. I took off its scales,
cut it open, seasoned it with thyme.
But my experience doesn’t compare to the time
salmon spend muscling their way from the sea
to spawning grounds hundreds of miles upstream. That’s scaling
obstacles, with a vengeance. They lay their salmon-colored eggs till the bears
descend in a brown frenzy. Then there’s nothing but red water and the sound of rain.
They came, they saw, they gave their children life. Died like a guttering
pink fire. It’s not an elegant word, gut,
but we all have one, even if we can’t sacrifice like salmon in fall, the time
of year when everything is dying. (Gut-feeling gives Irish songs from rainy
moors that yearning sound. Struggle bleeds through music, relentless as the sea’s
pull. They way major and minor are overlaid is sometimes unbearably
beautiful: I try not to cry at the last notes of the scale.)
Where there are mermaids, they have scales
the sheen of spilled-oil rainbows. They’d play violins with catgut
strings, protest ocean pollution—their singing and their bare
skin would change anyone’s mind. Time
and again, I envy people who know their path. I sit by the sea
and listen to it’s constant struggle; I love the continuous motion of the rain.
I try to scale the slippery fish of passing time.
I’m no mermaid; I don’tknow what I’d swim upstream for—but the sea pulls like my gut-
feeling: there’s passion in the motion of salmon, bear, and falling rain.
A eulogy, after Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Youth should burn and rave, not fade away;
rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though at the last you must have known that night
was wrong, you could not peel the clinging dark away—
you leapt into that soft dark balm of night.
Once, you caught and sang the sun in flight.
You loved a girl who could draw any face
but still you leapt into that balm of night.
I did not know you well, but you could fight—
it was your signature. With words, with grace—
swift kicks, hands blurring in the evening light.
Your words suggested a firm grip on life.
You spoke to us of cosmos, Dao, the Way,
quietly insisting what was right.
Your music spoke as if from some great height.
Dark, vital chords, but you were miles away—
flamenco strains against the bonds of life.
You had to know someone would find your shell
turning slowly, dangling from that height,
would fall on to their knees and start to pray
for the first time in their remembered life.
Youth should rave and fight, not fade away.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light
when you leapt into that balm of night.
In-Between Waking and Sleeping
The edge of my exhaustion like the edge
of a storm cloud about to break. A spell
of warm fog and floating thoughts upwelling
on tides of emotion, raw ropes barely
Holding, about to fray. Enfolding
rational facts with dream colors, blunt thoughts
that have no words attached. My will: an old
boat, or mere raft—planks creaking like she
wants to go to sea. Between the slats
phosphorescence beckons: synapses flashing
neon signs: wish fulfillment—dreams are free.
Flashing like my mind is sending up flares—
because no one dares to live what they dream.
Whatever the cause, I cast off those taut
ropes, drift on the loping waves, raft lapped by
salt water, intimate in warm rain.
Leaving Season
Early summer leaving season
and the air sticks to me like wet cloth.
It wants to hold on to passing things.
Colors assault my eyes: fuchsia spikes, falling wisteria.
The air sticks to me like love lost.
I walk to the grocery store down crumbling southern roads--
colors assault my mind, sprawling violet across remaining time.
Buttercups Jackson Pollacked across the rugby field.
The sweet decay of crumbling southern roads,
the smooth grooves of same paths traveled many times.
Buttercups studding fields and the drinkable sky.
The light wind intimate and sweat everywhere my body folds.
The smooth groves of beech trees climbed many times.
I'm not searching, just letting sights fall into my eyes.
In windless air my body swims in sweat, my eyes in light.
On roads and fields, kind ghosts walk in the heat of day.
Sinking in honey, I fall into these sights.
I hold on to passing things with humid hands.
Ghost heat-mirages with friends' faces
walk off into summer, rippling.
That poem about mermaids
I don’t have a title for this one. It’s a sestina—a very strange form where the last words of each line repeat throughout the poem, in the different verses. Hence some very short lines and some very long ones. Also, I’m not sure how I feel about how prose-like it is. I mean, I like it. But I’m not sure if it’s a poem. Thoughts?
Also, a style thing: the lines that look like they're not supposed to wrap to the next line aren't supposed to. They're just too long to fit so I guess you just have to imagine them being on the line above. There might be a way to change the layout so they fit but I haven't found it yet.
Mermaids are at home in the rain.
Does rain rust dragon scales?
Every beautiful and strange thing, on sea
or land, is born with the gut-
feeling that, in time,
they’ll have to bear
a burden they can barely
carry. I used to love superheroes, who reigned
over us mortals with their timeless
stories. They scaled
impossible obstacles, gutted
countless villains (all to plant the seed
of peace in the world.) But I’ve never seen
such aggression, passion, or splashing water as when bears
attack during the salmon spawn. When I first gutted
a fish—took the insides out, threw the outsides away—it was rainy,
bittersweet: an intimate experience with reality. I took off its scales,
cut it open, seasoned it with thyme.
But my experience doesn’t compare to the time
salmon spend muscling their way from the sea
to spawning grounds hundreds of miles upstream. That’s scaling
obstacles, with a vengeance. They lay their salmon-colored eggs till the bears
descend in a brown frenzy. Then there’s nothing but red water and the sound of rain.
They came, they saw, they gave their children life. Died like a guttering
pink fire. It’s not an elegant word, gut,
but we all have one, even if we can’t sacrifice like salmon in fall, the time
of year when everything is dying. (Gut-feeling gives Irish songs from rainy
moors that yearning sound. Struggle bleeds through music, relentless as the sea’s
pull. They way major and minor are overlaid is sometimes unbearably
beautiful: I try not to cry at the last notes of the scale.)
Where there are mermaids, they have scales
the sheen of spilled-oil rainbows. They’d play violins with catgut
strings, protest ocean pollution—their singing and their bare
skin would change anyone’s mind. Time
and again, I envy people who know their path. I sit by the sea
and listen to it’s constant struggle; I love the continuous motion of the rain.
I try to scale the slippery fish of passing time.
I’m no mermaid; I don’tknow what I’d swim upstream for—but the sea pulls like my gut-
feeling: there’s passion in the motion of salmon, bear, and falling rain.
a few from last fall
10,000 Feet
10,000 feet—an altitude
for the brave and silent.
But the marmots thrive,
just by being fat and furry and
living under rocks, and frisking
in the cool bright sunshine.
They do not hibernate but survive
by storing up grasses to eat in winter.
What a life. But they seem
happy, enjoy sunning themselves
on the ledges. Oh don’t give
me that bullshit about we
don’t know whether they can
feel emotions, “love
their children,” etc.
The marmot sitting in the
sun, enjoying its’ warmth, is
definitely happy. The way
Opa was when Daddy wheeled
him into the backyard of
Avalon House and he sat
in the sun and said
“Ahh” in German, and then
there was a fox, which was always
his favorite animal. And
Opa and the fox both
sat motionless in the
sunlit backyard and
looked at each other,
the one with sleek red
fur and the man with downy
white hair, his alter ego, both
silent and still, it didn’t
matter that Opa had to
be still because his legs
didn’t work anymore and
silent because the
words in his mind didn’t
match the ones that
came out of his mouth.
NO ARMS BUT WINGS
(NO LEGS AT ALL)
Native taxidermists of New Guinea prepared the birds for trading by cutting off their legs and drying them over a fire. Islamic traders brought the stuffed birds to Europe where people saw that they “lack feet and are therefore obliged to fly continuously and live in the highest sky,” and thus named them “bird of paradise.”
In animals, arms and legs are what
make things happen. Are what let us
walk, reach, hold on to the dusty earth
with our bare toes. Are what buoy
us up when we jump, for a fleeting time
suspend the duty of being attached
to a planet. Let us hibernate a whole
winter long among tree roots,
cradled in bare earth bones.
Medievals in their frail bodies
loved the bird that broke
the confines of their narrow,
gravity-bound life, soared above
the mucky courtyards and disease,
forever purer and happier.
But animals need arms, cannot
live long without reaching
toward another warm body.
The bird of paradise lives a life of
enforced freedom. His feathery cage
lets him draw near other birds but
never close enough.
I never thought I would find myself
arguing against wings. But if I measure
what I love most by what hurts me most
when I try to do without it, I would
have to pick arms over wings.
PROTOZOAN LOVE
Proto•zoan
Their name means
not quite animal,
means
not like us.
But they’re where we came from—
microscopic swimmers
in the primordial soup
where everything was sea
and no land.
They move like little
ticking clocks, measuring their
short lives in forward spurts.
Pliant machines
diving blindly
through forests of weeds.
Are they happy?
They don’t need a mind
to do what they do,
so it doesn’t bother them that
they don’t know what happy is.
Their flagella undulate.
Their cilia beat
in perfect synchrony.
Their pellicles protect them
from the outside world.
They work so well,
but they don’t know love.
If only they could feel what we feel.
Plumb the ocean depths of passion.
Know from a smile, a wordless
glance across a crowd, that you
fill all the crevices of someone’s mind.
But maybe my height
has clouded my vision—maybe I
look down on them
as the mountain looks down on me—
What if there is,
somewhere in their
tiny ticking bodies, a wish
to be held?
Or irrationally believed in
beyond all doubt?
Who hasn’t yearned for something
they’ve never known?
Been homesick for a place
they’ve never been?
Maybe down in the muck
in the mangrove swamps
among the interwoven roots
Protozoa are discovering new truths
about the nature of attachment.
Or at least enjoying some coital bliss.
Down in the muck
seems as likely a place as any
for discoveries about yearning to be made.
Evolution is an endlessly patient
maiden aunt, who steers her charges
with a light hand
and mostly lets them go their own way.
They may well have given
their guardian the slip, snuck
out one night and found,
earlier on the phylogenetic tree
than we once thought,
those immortal secrets that
Rumi’s words whispered of.
10,000 feet—an altitude
for the brave and silent.
But the marmots thrive,
just by being fat and furry and
living under rocks, and frisking
in the cool bright sunshine.
They do not hibernate but survive
by storing up grasses to eat in winter.
What a life. But they seem
happy, enjoy sunning themselves
on the ledges. Oh don’t give
me that bullshit about we
don’t know whether they can
feel emotions, “love
their children,” etc.
The marmot sitting in the
sun, enjoying its’ warmth, is
definitely happy. The way
Opa was when Daddy wheeled
him into the backyard of
Avalon House and he sat
in the sun and said
“Ahh” in German, and then
there was a fox, which was always
his favorite animal. And
Opa and the fox both
sat motionless in the
sunlit backyard and
looked at each other,
the one with sleek red
fur and the man with downy
white hair, his alter ego, both
silent and still, it didn’t
matter that Opa had to
be still because his legs
didn’t work anymore and
silent because the
words in his mind didn’t
match the ones that
came out of his mouth.
NO ARMS BUT WINGS
(NO LEGS AT ALL)
Native taxidermists of New Guinea prepared the birds for trading by cutting off their legs and drying them over a fire. Islamic traders brought the stuffed birds to Europe where people saw that they “lack feet and are therefore obliged to fly continuously and live in the highest sky,” and thus named them “bird of paradise.”
In animals, arms and legs are what
make things happen. Are what let us
walk, reach, hold on to the dusty earth
with our bare toes. Are what buoy
us up when we jump, for a fleeting time
suspend the duty of being attached
to a planet. Let us hibernate a whole
winter long among tree roots,
cradled in bare earth bones.
Medievals in their frail bodies
loved the bird that broke
the confines of their narrow,
gravity-bound life, soared above
the mucky courtyards and disease,
forever purer and happier.
But animals need arms, cannot
live long without reaching
toward another warm body.
The bird of paradise lives a life of
enforced freedom. His feathery cage
lets him draw near other birds but
never close enough.
I never thought I would find myself
arguing against wings. But if I measure
what I love most by what hurts me most
when I try to do without it, I would
have to pick arms over wings.
PROTOZOAN LOVE
Proto•zoan
Their name means
not quite animal,
means
not like us.
But they’re where we came from—
microscopic swimmers
in the primordial soup
where everything was sea
and no land.
They move like little
ticking clocks, measuring their
short lives in forward spurts.
Pliant machines
diving blindly
through forests of weeds.
Are they happy?
They don’t need a mind
to do what they do,
so it doesn’t bother them that
they don’t know what happy is.
Their flagella undulate.
Their cilia beat
in perfect synchrony.
Their pellicles protect them
from the outside world.
They work so well,
but they don’t know love.
If only they could feel what we feel.
Plumb the ocean depths of passion.
Know from a smile, a wordless
glance across a crowd, that you
fill all the crevices of someone’s mind.
But maybe my height
has clouded my vision—maybe I
look down on them
as the mountain looks down on me—
What if there is,
somewhere in their
tiny ticking bodies, a wish
to be held?
Or irrationally believed in
beyond all doubt?
Who hasn’t yearned for something
they’ve never known?
Been homesick for a place
they’ve never been?
Maybe down in the muck
in the mangrove swamps
among the interwoven roots
Protozoa are discovering new truths
about the nature of attachment.
Or at least enjoying some coital bliss.
Down in the muck
seems as likely a place as any
for discoveries about yearning to be made.
Evolution is an endlessly patient
maiden aunt, who steers her charges
with a light hand
and mostly lets them go their own way.
They may well have given
their guardian the slip, snuck
out one night and found,
earlier on the phylogenetic tree
than we once thought,
those immortal secrets that
Rumi’s words whispered of.
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