Pareidolia

Crescent moons curve this way,

then that way. What does it prove?

Not, as I once thought, that this one waxes,

that one wanes. Instead the outer curve

of a crescent moon shows where the sun is.

Why wasn’t that obvious? The whole

moon is there whether I can see it

or not. The moon is never what it seems.

Not circle nor crescent nor bowl.

Instead the moon is a sphere in orbit

about the earth, a constant spirit

tugging at our seas, pretending to be

rabbit or frog, boy or girl,

buffalo, dragon, oyster or pearl.

Essay

by Hayden Carruth

So many poems about the deaths of animals.

Wilbur’s toad, Kinnell’s porcupine, Eberhart’s squirrel,

and that poem by someone — Hecht? Merrill? —

about cremating a woodchuck. But mostly

I remember the outrageous number of them,

as if every poet, I too, had written at least

one animal elegy; with the result that today

when I came to a good enough poem by Edwin Brock

about finding a dead fox at the edge of the sea

I could not respond; as if permanent shock

had deadened me. And then after a moment

I began to give way to sorrow (watching myself

sorrowlessly the while), not merely because

part of my being had been violated and annulled,

but because all these many poems over the years

have been necessary — suitable and correct. This

has been the time of the finishing off of the animals.

They are going away — their fur and their wild eyes,

their voices. Deer leap and leap in front

of the screaming snowmobiles until they leap

out of existence. Hawks circle once or twice

above their shattered nests and then they climb

to the stars. I have lived with them fifty years,

we have lived with them fifty million years,

and now they are going, almost gone. I don’t know

if the animals are capable of reproach.

But clearly they do not bother to say good-bye.