—with a line by Marguerite Yourcenar
The candle isn’t bothered by the flame, light doesn’t complain
when swallowed by dusk, pebbles don’t mourn the mountain
they’ve crumbled from, mountain lions fatten on feral burrows
that are wrecking wetlands, the Australian crocodile that makes
a fine meal of feral pigs doesn’t know it’s endangered,
the pigs don’t know they’re invasive, we’re all ravenous, cascading
tragedies, dipping into glimmers of relief, gripping the flywheel,
trying to get by, sorting angels from villains, poachers from
preachers, loners from shooters, all of us wreathed in this
sorry mixture of blood and lymph. I mean, look at me, shelling
invasive Asian tiger shrimp for dinner, tearing off the soft
swimmerets that once streamed seaweed and brooded eggs,
slitting the fleshly crescent with a paring knife as my thumbnail
scrapes the thin white vein that once carried the colorless blood.
