Safe

June 5 2020

The nights are quiet here.

So unlike

dense tropical jungle

with its cacophony of calls,

or the lush green wilderness

far to our south.

There are owls

who can sound like barking dogs;

or close enough

to get mine growling in response.

Nocturnal hunters

with muffled feathers

and superbly sensitive ears

they swoop low between the closely spaced trees

and count on stealth.

Loons, who mate for life

paddle in leisurely pairs 
in the platinum light,

barely ruffling the water's moonlit calm.

Their haunted hoots, yodels, and tremolos

seem as elemental as darkness itself,

eternal and mysterious.

Breaking the silence

their cry lingers

on the stillness of night;

resonates, then trails away
like a held note
that runs out of breath,

the last plaintive air
from a lone clarinet.

And while the call of the loon

never fails to excite

it also reassures

with its powerful sense of place,

grounded here

on a northern lake

surrounded by balsam and pine.

Trees whisper

in a fitful wind.

While in the underbrush

something makes a rustling sound;

a small mammal
with large round eyes 
and a racing heart,

either hunter or prey
under cover of dark,

or quietly grazing

away from her young.

And beneath my feet

the loose crunch of gravel and sand

on this familiar path,

leading me nowhere

except back where I began;

trying to be inconspicuous

when it's bright enough for shadows,

surreptitious

when I can't help but be loud.

How clumsy humans are;

stumbling through the woods,

blundering our way

on imperfect ground.

Intruders in the natural world

we have the presumption to imagine

we can ever call home.

Where wary creatures 
fall silent
until we've walked well past,

keeping their distance 
and carefully tracking our every move

until we are safe behind closed doors.

This poem actually began with the third stanza. I wanted to write something about the call of the loon. Which I love, and which is so essential to the experience of the boreal north. But which is also challenging to write about because it's such a cliche.

When I listened in my head to an imagined call, I realized what a silent space it entered. How, in the cacophony of the tropics, for example, it would be lost in all the other sounds. So the poem expanded into a rumination on silence. Which is part of the power of the call of the loon: how it breaks the silence, how it lingers and resonates in the still quiet air. (This line, by the way, appeared here before I realized it – or some version of it – had to be in the poem. This isn't the first time I preferred something I wrote in the commentary over the poem itself!) In jungle of course, it's not easy to be seen; so animals rely far more on their ears than their eyes. And in the more temperate forests – moving north but still well south of us – there are just plain more of them. Here, it's relatively quiet because there isn't nearly the biodiversity nor the density of living things: nature is sparse and the living is hard.

A rumination on silence, then. But also on man in nature, and of man against the natural world. Which is a familiar trope of mine; one I'm afraid I too easily fall into, and that by now must be getting tired from so much repetition. Nevertheless, I'm very pleased with the way the final line inverts expectations. It's not us who feel safe behind closed doors; it's only when we're there that the wild animals are safe from us: "safely" behind closed doors, rather than "safe".

While I love writing nature poems, I have valiantly resisted letting every poem be one. But after a quick review of my last few posted pieces, I think I've come to accept that this is what I am:  a nature writer. I seem to always want to put an animal in everything I write. It's my starting place and my default. I Googled it, and there actually is a recognized school of nature poetry. And not just that, but many celebrated poets -- like Frost, Wordsworth, Keats, and  Tennyson -- are regarded as such. I would as well include a more contemporary figure like the late Mary Oliver. So while I will still try for variety, I think I will stop resisting so hard. There must be an audience for this stuff. There must be a reason we want to read and write it.