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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.

 

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