Sing, O muse, of the lumbering opossum,
of the nearsighted, stumbling
opossum, whose only defenses are a hiss,
a hideous scowl and a rank
scent emitted in terror.
Let us rejoice in the pink-nosed, pink-fingered
opossum,
her silvery pouch full of babies, each no bigger than a
honeybee...
May your young thrive to
ride upon your back.
May they fatten and grow large and stumble off on
their own
to devour cockroaches and carrion and venomous snakes.
~ May
their snuffling root out all the ticks in our yards and all the snails
in our flower beds.
When they faint in the face of marauding dogs, we
call back our baying hounds
and wait for them to wake.
We cheer when
they rise and shake themselves.
We send them with our blessings as they
blunder back into the night.
Let
peals of gratitude ring out for the glossy vulture,
soarer of air
currents, eater of gore.
We gaze in wonder at your distant perfection,
mistaking you for creatures we thoughtlessly love much more: for eagles
or hawks or ospreys.
Stolid in our heavy human bones, we follow you with
our eyes,
watching as you barely shift the angle of your wings to bank
and glide, to circle and circle again.
May
we remember in your circling the cycle you complete.
On the ground,
something is suffering.
Something is coming near to the end of its time
among us,
but its life is not ending.
~ Its life can never end.
You are
turning its body into something beautiful: blood and feathers and hollow
bones.
Earthbound no longer, the dead are rising again in you, rising
and rising, lifted on air.
In
summer we consider the whine of the mosquito,
the secrecy of the
spider, the temper of the wasp — who among us could love you?
Who could
love even one of you, bearing your poisons and your pain into the heavy
summertime air? We could.
We could love you if we remind ourselves that
no creature is made up only of poison,
that no life is only a source of
irritation or pain.
We could love the
mosquitoes for feeding the chittering chimney swifts wheeling in the
sunset,
for feeding the tree swallows flying low over the lake at dusk.
We could love the spider for spinning the silk that holds together the
moss of the hummingbird’s nest, ...the silk that stretches as the baby
birds grow.
We could love the wasp for eating the caterpillars that eat
the tomato plants.
We could love you all if only we remembered the tree
swallows and the hummingbirds,
if only we remembered the taste of
homegrown tomatoes still warm from the sun.
On
endless summertime evenings,
...on cool and generous summertime evenings,
let us speak kindly of the red bat,
the homely little bat with the
smushed face and the hairless infants clinging to her fur
~ by teeth and
thumb and feet.
In daylight, she dangles one-footed from a tree branch,
masquerading as a dead leaf.
At nightfall she unfolds her canny wings
and skitters to her work,
sweeping through the skies, circling under the
streetlights,
clearing the air of moths whose larvae eat our trees,
sweeping up all the whining, stinging creatures we swat at in the dark.
Behold
the rat snake gliding silently through the nighttime weeds.
Behold the
sleek skin, cool but not damp,
and the clever darting tongue, sniffing
out the contours of the world.
Watch as she finds the crack under the
toolshed door.
Understand that she is finding too the tiny bald mice in
the corner of a drawer full of painting rags — the tiny blind mice
hidden in the soft remains of ancient bedsheets fallen to ruin.
Pity
the young of the poor field mouse, born for just this purpose.
... Always
there are mice — more mice than the world could ever hold
if not for a
system that includes this beautiful, sinewy creature, this silent
celebration of muscle and grace, this serpent serving our uses but too
often coming to a brutal end at the end of a hoe.
World, world,
forgive our ignorance and our foolish fears.
~ Absolve us of
our anger and our error.
In your boundless gift for renewal, disregard
our undeserving.
For no reason but the hope that one day we will know
the beauty of unloved things,
stoop to accept our unuttered thanks.
Levora
