On Animals: Three Poems
Record No. 2
I love poetry that shows our parallel lives with animals. We witness their fluency within the ecosystem and how they pollinate nature through generous exchanges. Animals are true legacies, maybe transforming a bit over time, but adaptive and confident nonetheless. If we think of animals from a place of ego, we often manipulate the idea of them in order to demonstrate a self-serving human trait. I find poems which exploit the nature of animals to advance our sense of control reductive and boring. I think it’s more fun to appreciate animals for their own complexities and ruminate on our position as spectators and kin.
I recently came across “The Sound of a Heart” by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson while aimlessly digging through C Magazine’s digital archive. I read it once and then again and again. It’s funny and honest and provides new insight upon each reading.
“Iguana” is written by one of my creative writing professors from undergrad, Christian Campbell. It’s my favourite of his, found in his 2010 poetry collection Running the Dusk. I still think of his guidance whenever I practice writing poetry, as rare as that is now.
And Mary Oliver with “Lead.” I recited this during the first anniversary of my dear friend and uncle Farhad’s passing in 2016. I’ve read it for every anniversary since. Farhad loved poetry and although he’d probably find this one cheesy (that doesn’t mean it’s not good!) I know he’d appreciate the sentiment.
So, here are three poems about some of our beloved ancient creatures and beyond:
“The Sound of a Heart” by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Kinaak* sits alone beside the marsh
with just their mazinaabikiwebinigan
and the sound of the odd car
passing by at 70 km/hour.
Forty million years is a long time to live.
Two hundred years of smashed
carapaces is a lot to witness.
A world is a heavy thing
to carry on your back.
The moon travels farther than you think.
Kinaak sits alone beside the marsh
with just their mazinaabikiwebinigan*
and the sound of the odd car
passing by at 70 km/hour,
and types one character
per twenty-four hours.
S is first.
L comes on the second day.
O follows on the third day.
and finally, W.
On the fifth day, Kinaak pulls the page out and leans the sign up on a rock at the edge of the wetland before the road and thinks the word maybe should have been “fast,” not “slow.” The original idea was that kinaakag and miskwaadesiwag* should slow down before they cross the road and just think about whether the risk is worth it. Just sit with it for a minute. Just consider all of the other possibilities before stepping out onto the pavement.
Now it seems like the word “fast” was the better choice, as in, if you are making this journey don’t fiddle fart around. Get to the other side as quickly as possible. But “slow” is already done, so there you go.
Kinaak could lounge around all day in the pond now that the sign is up instead of moving each piece of shattered carapace off the road and burying it after each execution. But the problem of roads is easier to mitigate for Kinaak than the bigger problems of the pond. Even a two-degree change in annual temperature wipes out one gender of turtles, and housing prices have skyrocketed now that there are hardly any wetlands left.
Kinaak is a faster, like Makwa*. Each winter, Kinaakag go deep, below the mud of the pond and slow their drum beat to one beat every ten minutes, and lower their body temperature to nearly 0 degrees C.
they gather
in the winter lodge
formed from earth
and ice
slow
pray
sing
dream
earth below
world above
wait things out
but together.
Kinaak has done this
for forty thousand years.
yes. yes.
fasting is the secret to life.
fasting
is
the
secret
to growing the biggest heart.
A heart so big, that it’s the only sound.
A heart so big, it is the only answer.
Kinaak
wakes,
warms,
quickens.
Kinaak leans their SLOW sign up on a rock at the edge of the wetland and before the road and begins to remove the pieces of carapace from the pavement.
And when Kinaak removes the last broken piece of shell, they look back to see Kwezens* installing her homemade SLOW, TURTLES signs using laminated poster board and her brother’s old sawed-off hockey sticks on each side of the road and on either side of the wetland.
A heart so big, now there are two.
*Kinaak(ag) is a snapping turtle(s).
*Mazinaabikiwebinigan is a typewriter or computer.
*Miskwaadesi(wag) means painted turtle(s).
*Makwa is a bear.
*Kwezens is a girl.
“Iguana” by Christian Campbell
for A. T.
My friend from Guyana
was asked in Philadelphia
if she was from “Iguana.”
Iguana, which crawls and then
stills, which flicks its tongue at the sun.
In history we learned that Lucayans
ate iguana, that Caribs
(my grandmother’s people)
ate Lucayans (the people of Guanahani).
Guiana (the colonial way,
with an i, southern-most
of the Caribbean) is iguana; Inagua
(southern-most of The Bahamas,
northern-most of the Caribbean)
is iguana. Inagua, crossroads with Haiti,
Inagua of the salt and flamingos.
The Spanish called it Heneagua,
“water is to be found there,”
water, water everywhere.
Guyana (in the language of Arawaks,
Wai Ana, “Land of Many Waters”)
is iguana, veins running through land,
grooves between green scales.
My grandmother from Moruga,
(southern-most in Trinidad)
knew the names of things.
She rubbed iguana with bird pepper,
she cooked its sweet meat.
The earth is on the back
of an ageless iguana.
We are all from the Land of Iguana,
Hewanorra, Carib name for St. Lucia.
And all the iguanas scurry away from me.
And all the iguanas are dying.
“Lead” by Mary Oliver
Here is a story
to break your heart.
Are you willing?
This winter
the loons came to our harbor
and died, one by one,
of nothing we could see.
A friend told me
of one on the shore
that lifted its head and opened
the elegant beak and cried out
in the long, sweet savoring of its life
which, if you have heard it,
you know is a sacred thing,
and for which, if you have not heard it,
you had better hurry to where
they still sing.
And, believe me, tell no one
just where that is.
The next morning
this loon, speckled
and iridescent and with a plan
to fly home
to some hidden lake,
was dead on the shore.
I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.
***
See you next time!