Poetry: The Pack Rat

The Pack Rat

 The pack rat constructs a nest around it.
Debris is its shelter:
all its journeys out into the wild
all the odds and ends--
Burying itself in those past moments.
     the time it saw the snow-covered peaks
     the time it hid from stomping feet
     the time food was abundant
     the time water was life
     the time water was death.

We see its massive structure--
and admire its conspicuous life and achievement,
never seeing the pack rat
nestled in formulated debris.

I will strip away the spoons and shiny metal
so you can see a reflection of me.

You will take the image back
to patch your retreat.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Letter to Joshua

 Dear Joshua,    Recently, a wonderful man who I had the honor of meeting on several occasions passed away way too soon. As I was driving home from Redding today, I thought about him and the last conversation I had with him. I told him that I had not been writing, but I was dreaming about it. I would wake up in the middle of the night and the words "You are a writer" would be imprinted in my brain. He told me, "Well, then you need to write." It was so simple, but sometimes the things we know in our heart need to be said out loud. As I was thinking about that conversation, my mind began to focus on you and a letter composed itself in my head. I thought about if I really needed to write it or if you just knew, and then I thought about what this man had said to me, "Well, then you need to write," so here I am seven years after your death, writing you a letter.     Sometimes when I have a moment to myself, when the obligations of life are not calling me in eve...
Read more

To Kill or Not to Kill?

Image
   As of May, I "own" a lawn, a front one and a back one, in fact. As of August, a gopher has laid claim to the front lawn, and where there was once a green, lush, unmarred bed of grass, there is now the construction of an elaborate gopher mansion with brown mounds of dirt strategically placed to get the choicest grubs. This gopher had no permits, no land title, no consideration of how its presence would affect me. It has taken something that I was proud of and killed it aesthetically (kind of like how strip malls have killed the beauty of the natural landscape). This miscreant gopher has strip malled my front lawn.      When I saw the first mound, I didn't think it was a big deal. It was just an animal trying to survive. I believe in coexistence; I could handle one mound. When I saw the second mound, I did what any person would do in a crisis; I turned to Google .  Google gave me lots of options which seemed to favor non-lethal methods of extraction. Upon...
Read more

A Mother's Cup

                                                                            A Mother's Cup There is a poem seeping through my skin in faded brilliance of blue and violets. There is no holding it back--it is about you-- the wrinkled, white shirt and tired eyes still sharp and deep deeper than the Mariana Trench and as violent as   the torrents of Niagara Falls. I couldn't hold your hard moments in my hands--snatch them from you-- those treasures covered in years of shit and soil and rust-- you have to carry them. The poem begins leaking from my eyes--green thorns of roses tumbling down my cheeks. I hear you. The words dulled to the monotonous hums of background noise your lips wanting to scream into the silence I heard you yell FUUCCCCCCCCCCCK. The poe...
Read more