June 2021
Bio Note: This month’s poem was inspired by a collection of essays written by Loren Eiseley, an anthropologist and natural science writer. I began reading these essays at the start of the covid lockdown last spring, and found them to be just right for the moment. The part about the young occultist and his suggestion is true. I have published three chapbooks, the most recent of which is Icarus: Anthropology of Addiction. I am English language editor for Poetry Hall: A Chinese and English Bilingual Journal and I serve on the board of the Council for Wisconsin Writers.
An Earnest Young Occultist at a Party Suggests
I Have Intercourse in a Graveyard
Maybe I do intellectualize too much. Alarmed
at my lifespan being rooted here in just this one
now, my life a subatomic particle immovable
in the vast river of time or the way plants are stuck
dirt-bound, unable to explore earth’s latitudes.
Like rebel angels, my winged thoughts fly from my body
to swoop from distant past to troubling future.
We are made of fossils, even before we become one.
Our sea-born bones carry ruined stars and ancient
crustaceans. Let my grave be carved by a stream into
layered sandstone. I’ll try crawling into it this bright
noon and sink to those strata before spoken time
before our ancestors jumped from the trees and crept
onto the wide savannah. So, tonight, creep with me
to the grassland of the graveyard and let the life
pulse of your red river hurry to find its dead-end street.
©2021 Sylvia Cavanaugh
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author (email address above) to tell her or him. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual.
It is very important. -JL