The History of the Smaller Animals
No time for reflection burying the roadkill possum,
for across the way the neighbor with a plan
already plots his bullying in his shiny Dodge Ram.
Covering over evidence with dirt, thinking
about how we notice first our own kind,
and ignore the animals, big and small,
hiding from humans who hit and run
and don’t give a fuck. So much to face
in quiet reflection—a childhood flattened
for development, woods cut for timber,
the only creek that ever mattered now buried
in asbestos pipes. Gone, mentor chipmunks,
possums, coons. The sleek groundhog observing
our every move. At the pond the great blue heron
content to be alone. All that culture clouds—
ancient animal habitats, trails of nuanced
knowledge about how to survive. Wisps of fog,
stories connecting us to animal relatives.
Deep-rooted myth—a golden age when chestnuts
a hundred-foot tall fed millions/feathery
hemlocks sheltered the whole holler.
Essential knowledge lies close enough
in hidden arteries weaving in compost—
hints of what used to be. The coon
in cahoots with the weasel and the bear.
A box turtle memoir, more at home here than us.
A timeless comic book on the peace before rats
arrived to gnaw at outbuildings. A lonely poem
to be read slow about the red fox peering from
the fence line, long after the chickens disappeared.
Us half-literate hairy beasts cataloguing lumber
and water rights, as spiders make revisions
too fine to notice. Only later noting
the havoc in taking what we want.
Still a late-night quiet haunts before a dream
shrieks gritty truths. Actions say it all—
flood and fire, forever chemicals seeping
into groundwater, red stains on the concrete.
So much written (in blood and sinew),
lives a-blur—us flying fast, eager to get on.
Comic, the music-filled whoosh, the bump
and lurch, eyes avoiding the rearview mirror,
choosing (again) not to see.
Mark Vogel lives at the back of a Blue Ridge holler with his wife, Susan Weinberg, an accomplished fiction, and creative non-fiction, writer, and two foster sons. He currently is an Emeritus Professor of English at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. Poems and short stories have appeared in several dozen literary journals.
