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summer_jackelFrickin' poem can't decide that it needs to be written at some sensible time of day, oh no, this one rattles around sullenly in the back of my head eluding capture for a couple of weeks and then comes in to say hi at eleven o'clock at night. Grump.
Coming In
The outside is coming in, it
comes creeping from the forest, jutting inwards from the rivers and the oceans;
It is in already.
Look how much redwood duff and brambles
the dog has tracked into the house. He is small, fluffy
and unrepentant. So is it.
I began to think of this because there is
a grey parrot in my living room.
There: I said it. This creature speaks to me
not in his language or my own but a combination of the two
he has devised with human help.
I’ll try to do the same.
The wild bends to us. Not because we seized it,
not because we tore it from its context;
Although we did. Because it will come in.
Listen: I found a spider in my bathroom
this morning. There was a storm in spring
and I think the water almost drowned her.
The bathroom corner lacks a spider, which is my fault.
I feel sorrier than I should. This one was large,
uncomfortably at eye level. I shooed her upward, hoping
she would take the corner, but she fell, poor thing,
awkwardly pulling all her legs together. I put her in a cricket jar
and left for work.
That night found her swift, all shades of red and silver-dusted black. Her eyes faced forward.
Hello, I said, you are of the ground-hunting type, I think,
and I will offer you a cricket if you’ll take it.
The orange spider in the tank below her will be staying many years.
She is bright and fierce, keeps a careful house,
and does not wish to be disturbed.
If I could fly with them or run with them, swim their rivers, scratch
with their clawed feet, I surely would. But we have too broad of a perspective;
and still, no native tongue. Everywhere there are the other worlds.
The things the spiders whisper. The cat's demands, and how to speak with dogs.
Look at the map: wild places shrink, floodwater rising
all around them. But life will find its way.
It is coming in to live with us. Look at the birds;
they are thriving, more or less, if you count the millions indoors. It’s one example.
Broken but unkilled, life loves motion; it will form lattices and ecosystems;
relationships. The way it does. Alone with the symbols of one
animal mind, we struggle to encompass that which has no language,
only to find it, laughing, working on our own.
Coming In
The outside is coming in, it
comes creeping from the forest, jutting inwards from the rivers and the oceans;
It is in already.
Look how much redwood duff and brambles
the dog has tracked into the house. He is small, fluffy
and unrepentant. So is it.
I began to think of this because there is
a grey parrot in my living room.
There: I said it. This creature speaks to me
not in his language or my own but a combination of the two
he has devised with human help.
I’ll try to do the same.
The wild bends to us. Not because we seized it,
not because we tore it from its context;
Although we did. Because it will come in.
Listen: I found a spider in my bathroom
this morning. There was a storm in spring
and I think the water almost drowned her.
The bathroom corner lacks a spider, which is my fault.
I feel sorrier than I should. This one was large,
uncomfortably at eye level. I shooed her upward, hoping
she would take the corner, but she fell, poor thing,
awkwardly pulling all her legs together. I put her in a cricket jar
and left for work.
That night found her swift, all shades of red and silver-dusted black. Her eyes faced forward.
Hello, I said, you are of the ground-hunting type, I think,
and I will offer you a cricket if you’ll take it.
The orange spider in the tank below her will be staying many years.
She is bright and fierce, keeps a careful house,
and does not wish to be disturbed.
If I could fly with them or run with them, swim their rivers, scratch
with their clawed feet, I surely would. But we have too broad of a perspective;
and still, no native tongue. Everywhere there are the other worlds.
The things the spiders whisper. The cat's demands, and how to speak with dogs.
Look at the map: wild places shrink, floodwater rising
all around them. But life will find its way.
It is coming in to live with us. Look at the birds;
they are thriving, more or less, if you count the millions indoors. It’s one example.
Broken but unkilled, life loves motion; it will form lattices and ecosystems;
relationships. The way it does. Alone with the symbols of one
animal mind, we struggle to encompass that which has no language,
only to find it, laughing, working on our own.
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no subject
Date: 2011-03-16 09:59 pm (UTC)The wild will bend to us
if we will also
bend
to it.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-16 10:13 pm (UTC)