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street art (detail) colonia del sacramento, uraguay
The Naturalist
by
Angela Consolo Mankiewicz
breaks
a twig off a tree living in a brick-
lined
plot on a city street. She slaps
the
twig across a brownstone's iron gate,
absorbs
the rumble back to bone.
She
hears birdsongs among taxi horns, adds
a
grunt, a hum, silence; she spots a cat
on
a stoop, pets it in passing; she swerves
around
dog feces, jumps a grating; she
eyes
the sky, like a Sybil ...
To
burst, rot, rust, all in its turn,
by
overripening or contrivance, back to
animal,
mineral, vegetable. Ancient game.
All
the same. Innocence doesn't
matter. Ignorance doesn't matter. Greed
doesn't
matter. Survive
matters,
measured by unattended clocks.
Not
meant, not mean
just
are, here
...
interpreting signs
tickling
arm hairs, scraping the edge of a nail.
And
with cat, gate, feces, twig,
she
dies a little
in
the natural order of things,
ikon
of the unsponsored,
as
natural as things get.
~ first published in Lynx Eye
