Poems from "Interpretive Work"

No more nature we say after fourteen hours on the water in August,

skin ready to crack, lips too tender to close. No more nature

in November when blackfish strand in the salt marsh

and we’ve stood in sulphur muck as the tide falls out to dark,

their breath whistling hard as we dig pits for flippers

scraped raw by sand, as vets try to predict which

could survive until flood, which should get the syringe

of chemical sleep. No more nature after the storm blows up

while guiding kayakers across the bay, which means towing home

the shoulder injury, prow lunging the chop, tow rope

cinching the gut. No more nature after waking before dawn

to band birds in first frost, shin after shin ringed

with numbered metal, wing after wing teased from nets

until we almost forget how frightened their small hearts made us

when we first held them. No more, we can’t take it, can’t

resuscitate our wonder, can’t keep up with its unrelenting.

But then we have a beer. We take a shower. We decide

to walk around the pond and look for turtles. After all,

we could see a coyote lapping its reflection, we could find

the nest of the great horned owl that calls each night

as we lie in bed, unable to not listen, unwilling to miss anything.