Belonging: Place 3

It’s almost dusk again at the wildlife preserve. I was lucky enough to be alone with the ducks for a few minutes (took some pictures with my phone) but soon after the cars began showing up and the kids jumped out yelling “one of the ducks is pooping! Look, Mom, it’s pooping!” which, admittedly, is funny to me. Although, for a few moments while those birds waddled up to me, just inches away, I felt some small connection, or maybe just a short peacefulness – something I suppose most nature writers (which I am not, nor will I probably ever be) are attuned to, something that I don’t have a name for. Serenity maybe? That’s almost too sentimental, too gushy. For a minute I actually felt like I belong here.

Occasionally I feel that way when I write a poem. And I mean occasionally, as though I typically don’t “belong here” – writing poetry at all. It’s such an academic, such an intellectual thing to do, and I’m just a football watching, beer drinking, working-class moron with aspirations of immortality. Yes, I want to live forever. The only way I can figure to accomplish that is to write a book, to remind people that I was around, and that I had something to say. But now I wonder if that’s really it, having something to say? There’s got to be more than that. I heard somewhere recently that writing poetry is really about giving a name to something that didn’t already have one, describing something that exists but cannot otherwise be described. Maybe that’s what I want to do. Maybe, in my sub-intellectual skull, I want to discover something and share it with you.

Anyway, you’ve gone to Utah with your mom and I’m here alone, sitting on my favorite bench, the one chained to a white oak tree. The concert of honks and quacks that typically accompanies the sound of the fountain is at an unusual intermission when I hear, coming from behind me, a thump. On further investigation, I realize there’s a fruit tree at the edge of the woods. I’m guessing by the look of the rotting balls scattered around the ground beneath that’s it’s a nectarine tree (maybe peach, but I can’t make out any fuzz on the fruit). There’s a gray squirrel performing some arboreal gymnastics, kicking around produce in the process. Thump….thump….thump….every several seconds or so. And then it stops. I’m looking up at the squirrel who’s stopped leaping, flipping and spinning around the branches. He is staring down at me, his hands are just below his chin, and it looks like he’s tapping his fingers together, the way people do when they’ve been up to something and aren’t afraid to let you know. I can almost see the sinister grin on his face. And just like that, he takes off, catapulting himself to another tree completely before disappearing among the leaves. But in that moment, that short staring contest, I felt it again, that feeling of belonging….like a heart beat, thumping. Maybe that’s what I’ll call it, this momentary feeling of being “in-touch” with nature, a heartbeat, a thumping. Then again, maybe it doesn’t need a name. Maybe what I really want is the discovering, not the discovery. Maybe what I want to share with you is not the end, not the name, not the finding, but the journey, the way there. Maybe what I want to share with you is the…