Palo Verde
We leave dinner before dusk
set up mist nets
in the old landing strip,
stagger the angles,
wait for the omnivorous, the sanguivorous.
Headlamps yield clusters of light,
pick up bluegreen spider eyes
peering from black cracks in the dry marsh.
Thick-gloved, gentle, we untangle bats
from slings in the nets,
measure their warm fleshy winghands,
identify their tiny faces,
toss them back in the air to release.
A Study
of Microchiropteran Diversity
and Ecomorphology.
A vampire shrieks in the hands of my professor,
I know, I know you want to eat my soul.
We look at his teeth,
his long thumbs for walking,
his soft rage-filled body.
Desmodontus.
Before dawn I climb the iron tower
that faces mountains and river.
When light hits the water,
only the small things are moving
and grasses, white feathers.
| Katy Diana |
|
levelheaded: Palo Verde
This poem begins ominously enough. It’s dusk, and the speaker has helped set up traps for a “sanguivorous” beast among “spider eyes / peering from black cracks.” In a quick reversal, it becomes clear that “the sanguivorous” are small vampire bats, and the “thick-gloved” humans are in complete control of the situation. The speaker’s fearful and combative relationship with nature is revealed to be an inquisitive and even “gentle” approach.
Still, that original fear of being eaten (“omnivorous, the sanguivorous”) may have been pretty common even a few hundred years ago. The poem’s early lines remind us that only relatively recently is humankind secure enough to romanticize nature as a bastion of innocence and truth to be corrupted by humanity. It’s even more recently that we’ve actively set out to count, correct, and control nature in the name of Science. Point being, the poem reminds us of our distance from nature. It sets the stage for a dismissal of all fear. When the speaker’s professor mocks a bat – “I know, I know you want to eat my soul” – that meaningless gesture can be seen as another assertion of human power over nature. Nature is helpless in our “thick-gloved” hand.
This authority stretches into the language of the poem. The speaker’s revelatory aside – her abstracted title of an academic paper: “A Study / of Microchiropteran Diversity / and Ecomorphology” – accomplishes a couple things. It clarifies that these people are netting bats in the name of research, and it underlines the hard meaninglessness of scientific language. “Microchiropteran Diversity” is no match for “soft rage-filled body” or “warm fleshy winghands.” “Desmondontus” is no match for “vampire.” But scientific language, in its effort to be as specific and objective, misses something about how humans see the world.
In the poem’s final stanza, it’s as if a valve has blown. The speaker dispenses with scientific language. She’s been out from dusk till dawn (!), and finally at the end of the night she sees the “mountains and river.” The final lines run together smoothly – “only the small things are moving / and grasses, white feathers” – and we can’t help thinking these disparate observations are her gentlest, truest, most thoroughly awed look at the world around her.
-The Editors
