Self-Portrait as Unhearing Jay
Claire Beeli
I slink like mist to this place,
as those before me,
to be alone. To
listen
to the burble of creek and the ripple of fish, to
watch
for the arrows of hawks and flutter of leaves.
I wish to understand:
How the tadpole knows
where to swim,
how
words that fall from lips like rain
are born
and die as smooth stones sink.
Why
if you freeze you can never feel
growing pains.
Green trees cut are unringed,
unseeing. Un-
feeling.
Currents ripple through my ribs but pass straight through.
My body rejects
prosthetics,
a jay with one wing
is soil already
and so I will be.
What can a jay understand
if deaf to its own song?
Alone I can understand
why leaves quiver in the wind.
This water knows all I have,
the everythings. As infinite
as snowfall feels in February;
to the moles and the white hares,
to the burdened pines.
How can I hope to understand?
No more than field mice
know the names of stars.
No more than grasses
know what the wind
that carries sweetly their sun-scent,
will bring.
No more than I
know what it is to glide alone
and fin through water like ribbons.