The menagerie is not for naught, as
Bronko, coming to my aid tonight—
a broken soul in need of something
—satisfied despite. He’d heard the
arguing, knew the limits of the fight
and waited for the chance at salving:
a tongue on open knee I’d otherwise
rebuke, but not this overheated night.
He vied to stay where I was working
and while I prodded him away, a may-
fly (now in June) was taking flight
from whatever spot it had in hiding
to the upstart interest of the dog.
The mayfly, prone to show the blight
of its existence, bounced in ping
pong leaps upon the land-seal’s nose
and inevitably, of course, into his bite.
Bronko, for his part, spit up the thing
and so I clambered up to sweep the scene,
pinch the writhing weakling and invite
the nearby turtles—sort of slumbering
—to finish off what didn’t suit the dog.
They let the insect float about its plight
around their metric pond, never sinking
yet also never thinking of a possible
reprieve. In artificial current it might
have swirled beyond its own surviving:
fancy that! I counted rounds and hoped
it would defy the odds—earn the right
to live miraculous release, what any being
would pray to see. “As flies to wanton
boys are we to th’ gods;” for who’s contrite
in food and general chains of suffering?
Bronko’s long since lost the paltry plot,
and I should follow in his lead and insight,
bid all creatures a quietude of evening.
Every poem is a lesson
ReplyDeleteon how it works.
As we should take it
in a symposium, I suppose,
but true when we take
whatever we find,
wherever we are.
And every read is personal,
or circumstantial,
not always serving to
teach the teacher,
but that is also how it works.
Your hedgehog poem
passed me by on a busy street,
and even though I am currently
in the queue for getting my son
one of these animals — a late
birthday present that will not be
his until mid July, but that
is how the market goes —
that poem didn’t give me pause.
Not the way that this one does.
And why? It wasn’t the
menagerie, or not all of it.
The dog was a dog: indifferently
curious, obliviously alert
and dumbly happy just to be
a part of the story. Good dog.
The turtles, too, in their own ways,
were mildly awake, hypnotically
superfluous: turtles are turtles,
extended only so far from their shells.
But the mayfly, on the other hand,
took me by surprise. I hadn’t
expected to be noticing
the dance of a one day bug.
There was more to the poem.
An argument. A retreat.
Reflection. Looking outside oneself.
Noticing. That is how it works.
(P.S. Your stealth edit of the ending
was not noticed until after I wrote this.
A nice fix, but good job to begin with)