Following the Pack Rat
You learn to miss frost.
Kaleidescoped Earth
and that deadened
yellow, such life underneath where
of course, he (she)
rips rib from rib
lets the light out
or in
its small hovel, cigarettes, wiring,
hope for home.
Or deep within the rafter, the way
that I, climbing a tree I wasn’t meant to,
sought vantage and that thinning air.
Forgive them, for, of course,
we all wanted to make a difference.
Some of us finding
the highest hill.
That most visible place.
Others burrowing
deep.
I was able to spend some time last week with family down in southwest Colorado and this poem was inspired by one of their more frequent visitors … the pack rat. Funnily enough the last time I was down there I also wrote a poem about rodents and grandeur.
My parents have spent much of the last 18 months making a new place a home and meanwhile the local packrats are also trying to make a home… only, out of my parents' home. There’s something beautiful (and certainly frustrating) about the parallel pursuits.
Late fall/early winter is, to me, the season of homemaking. Between gathering family and/or loved ones, settling into winter or returning to personal comforts, it’s a time to channel your inner pack rat — unapologetically nesting.
With gratitude,
Reading this one after the most recent poem, I enjoyed the mirrored parallel from “Parthenon…”, where the narrator seeks thinning oxygen in this poem, while the other seeks oxygen.
Loved the little images of coziness, and I’m always a sucker for any half-reference to “forgive them for they know not what they do” as I feel like it’s one of the most painfully human sentiments in the Bible. Not sure if this was intended, but it’s always where my mind goes