Wild

Wildness is before invention: therefore, not

wildness, but simply what is. Invention gave it its name.

When I go for my scan, my body will speak to the machine

in a language that can only be translated.

Meanwhile, the cold and snow go on, twenty below, which is only a

measure

of relative issues, above or below the moment molecules begin to

move into their ice-pattern, though they are always

changing and apparently don’t favor one transformation over another.

The wolf is first endangered, then not. During the not, it can be shot.

Who says the wolf is dangerous? Not its cubs.

Ultimately, not the deer, who would overrun the woods and starve

without the sharp culling of the wolf. When danger appears, it is a

perspective.

The cells that were once invading my body were like an engine revved

too high,

all that racket for no good reason, yet they loved themselves and their

neurotic lives.

No perspective is the right one, because of all the others.

An aphorism is always wrong, yet it strikes us as exactly the right way

to say it, succinct, lifting the words in whole phrases, as if the truth

were barbells.

All that grunting to show how hard it is to pull those words

all the way over the head.

If there were snapping wolves below, it would be easy. It’s the

uselessness that gets celebrated.

The scan that shows nothing, that might as well not have been done.

The living that keeps getting carved out of so-called wilderness

and thinks it is special: a carving! a work of art!