It’s How Brave You Are

Wild and tame have changed.
Birds and seals were tame
When they had no fear

Of the first men near.
That’s what the men said
Who shot and clubbed them.

Wild used to mean beasts
Who would fight back, would
Eat you, half a chance.

Now the tame are pets
And food and park life,
And the wild what’s left,

A myth, like these deer
Who browse in the scrub
By the road, mule-eared,

And don’t lift their heads
When a truck rolls past,
Tame wolves in the back.

Scrub Oak Gate

If we were to name one thought,
Just a few words to sum up
The way your own thoughts haunt you,
We’d phrase it a bit like this—

What should I try to do now?
You can move us and swap us,
And add your own myth to taste,
But your core will still swirl there,

Some set of us that float through
Your head. How then shall I live?
You want to know what to do,
Now, and then now, and then next.

You, small knot in all the smoke
That curls from your thoughts as us,
Life as a quest, and your soul
As that which must choose to do.

One day you will leave the gate,
And the home you were will fall.
You were the gate, and the smoke,
And the walls, and can’t haunt back.

A Side Trip Through the Phrase

When it’s just us folks,
Not one thing to do,
It seems dull, but when
It’s just one of us,
Not a thing to do,

This same dull feels rich.
It’s how the mind turns—
To face more minds or
To face the day. Minds
Crave things. Mind’s not day.