back

find ourselves in nature

in a leaf of grass, as Whitman would put Whitman
"itself a child... the produced babe of the vegetation";

or in the fig,
plucked curiously by the framed hands of Eve in Eden;

or in our stellar wishes,
when Halley flies past our pale blue sky.
our arms outstretched,
reaching for the place we know is home;

in the soil under our fingernails,
when we claw away from the beast,
still struggling, just now into the arms of fellow "man";

in the muck of the bog,
in the stench stays on you, your denim for weeks;
in the leaf whose double-lobed body looked like the chambers of breath,
sit either side of my chest.
whose veins, indistinguishable from mine;

in the overwhelming mischaracterization of nature as
peaceful, good or
violent, evil
alike.
as anything so total at all.

in the places
we find
ourselves
as we really are.