World Without Us

 

(Written during the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020)

I'm sorry to say how sonorous earth would be
without us, how clear the voice of streams
plucking their harps of stone,

the waterfall-chant of leaping salmon,

goat bleats erupting from the torn

pomegranate of the nanny.
How fresh the smell of rain and sweet

the pollen on the bee's feet, hum

of rummaging among wild roses:

but who would make the Poem?
A dolphin perhaps, or an elephant on the shore,
susurrus of black flies fleeing her swished ear?
A stir in the leaf-languor jasmine, rattle of

palm fronds scenting storm, frolic of pelicans

skimming the whitecaps for carp?

One verse of the Poem might be
a logos of waves stroking coral, pink

in the grouper's gaze, his mouth articulating
bubbles in the mindfulness of the shark.
Or the whirring return of vast hunger

to the belly of the hummingbird. A rustle

in the pelt of an elk before his bugling stuns

the world back into silence.

How patiently the stars would listen

above the basso continuo of microbes

intoning their eternal restless intuitions.
But who would hear the night itself

and give voice to quietness?
Perhaps the owl, that darkling huntress
zeroing down on her mouse…
Oh the Poem will survive us, surely,

other tongues enunciate the descant

of the blood, wingéd and four-leggéd singers,

free to be their savage selves as we

once were, but humbler, quieter, knowing

beyond knowledge when to stop.