Equilibrium

Ready to give up, ready to be

a burnt offering on the altar of despair,

I catch, out the corner of my eye,

the slow, steady rowing of the barred owl

into the shadows of a forest I want to rescue

from the mindless sprawl

we call raising the standard of living—

or progress.

                  The self advances,

the ten thousand things take off—

leaving me slouched in a chair whose wood

was once the fine-grained disruption of a tree

felled in the rain forest. Closing my eyes,

I watch as the tree is toppled and dragged off,

as its absence lets in light, and a type of bryophyte

withdraws, the orchid with the yellow throat

following after—

                              and then the long-beaked birds

with red wings and blue tail feathers

oar away into the also retreating mists.

I keep watching as lampblack birds

with innocent orange feet swarm in

to rake for beetles,

as the grind and burr of distant machinery

grows thicker, and a team of botanists,

come for research and profit, digs out

the last of the shade sorrel,

christening it “the flowering decibel.”

Hmpf, sniffs Conjure and thumps my breastbone.

So you want to save the forest? Let it

save you first—

                        and she pours me a cup of tea

I must sweeten with the honey of attention.

Too many mornings, she’s seen me

splash a scald of it into a travel mug,

take a gulp, burn my throat—

living on headlines, crisis by crisis,

the daily outrage whose only profit is loss.

With her hand now gentle on my hair,

smoothing it, she hums,

                                      and the humming draws me

home to local sunlight and a fire of goldfinch

in the forsythia, to the waterfall

rush of notes the wood thrush

spills into the deep woods,

to the chortling of wild turkeys in the beeches—

I remember their wonky blue face paint

and scarlet wattles, the fan of tail feathers

unfurling, and the proud mating strut,

that self-assured

I’m-here-now-take-me march of survival.

I drink the tea. The earth breathes in and out with us.

If you are violent to a cup of tea,

Conjure whispers,

how can you save yourself or any living thing?