A nursing mother requests a pass
from the Commissioners of Time
to open a gate to the Red Sea dawn
when humanity was born.
The management's reluctant: Eve
lived in a savage age. They say
"That's no place for a baby." She
ripostes "It's precisely when and where
babies lived--or I'd not be here."
Incontrovertibly true. And so,
Deep Time's wardens let her go.
But this isn't our human world, it's
a Tove Jansson picturebook, full
of wonders spooks and beasts,
and Moomintrolls, those shy
Finnish folk with hippo snouts,
potbellied, tailed, ungainly, kind;
regarding even modern humankind
with politely-hid alarm (as do I;
though lacking belly, schnoz and tail,
I'm moomintrollishly shy).
So these gentle troll-commissioners
see human life now (not just Eve's)
as savage: no place for a child.
|
|
Trolls evade deep winter, too:
they hold a ritual autumn feast
of pine needles, aromatic-sour
that make you hibernate, at least
if your blood's sufficiently beast.
It's fall, so I uneasily eye
that bough on my formica with
no hearty appetite. Oh, I
have the taste for pine all right--
in the Sierra I deer-browse often:
needletips, nuts, baby cones, pollen.
Maybe my turpentine taste's a sign
I'll make a better Moomintroll than
ever I did a man--
though that's no Everest-climb.
But should I hibernate this year?
Poems and songs cry "finish me!"
And Frisco winter's mild, a mere
mist and wind and rain--
meeker than Finnish spring.
I think I'll fast, and see it through--
my own year's full chill wheel:
humanity's dawn, and sunset too--
and Eve, behind her veil.
|
