Page 58 - WTP Vol. IX #6

sydney lea
Affirmation
We saw the wound in the woodshed’s sheathing, which soon explained the midnight sound
that had snapped the two of us out of sleeping. Our old dog bayed like a horror film hound.
A chipmunk or squirrel had made a hole for winter behind a tier of wood
we hadn’t burned, and to wait out the cold, had filled it with seed. So there I stood,
in barnyard boots and underdrawers, to untangle the tale. Her den-time past, a bear had ripped away three boards and rifled the rodent’s paltry cache.
There were her tracks. Who would have thought? Compared to the unpredictable stories
nature provides, the ones we concoct
prove for the most part ordinary.
So plain a perception gave me pause. Laying my lust for invention aside,
I studied the gash the bear had clawed. She allowed me, if I squinted my eyes,
to turn the ruin into a flower,
an orange-rimmed set of petals arrayed around their dark interiors. Now– would such indulgence last a day?–
I granted the bear the easy judgment
I’d offer a child, who, perhaps knowing better, defies the civilized world’s proscriptions, making off with something she considers
essential to sustenance—or pleasure.
Lea, former Pulitzer finalist and Vermont Poet Laureate (2011-15), founded New England Review. His latest book of poetry, in collaboration with former Vermont Cartoonist Laureate James Kochalka, is a graphic mock-epic, The Exquisite Triumph of Wormboy (Able Muse, 2020). His thirteenth poetry collection, Here (Four Way Books), appeared in 2019. Seen from All Sides: Lyric and Everyday Life, collected newspaper columns from his years as Vermont Poet Laureate (2011-15), is new this year from Vermont’s Green Writers Press.
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