Squirrels In Washington

Squirrels in Washington come Galloping at you in fours, then brake To halt a few feet away And beg on hindquarters. No one stones them, And their fear is diminished. They do halt, even so, Some feet away, those few feet The object of my wonder. Do I Emit currents At closer quarters? Are those The few feet I would keep From a tame tiger? Is there A hierarchy, then, of distances, That must be observed, And non-observance would at once Agglutinate all of Nature Into a messy, inextricable mass? Ah Daphne! Passing From woman to foliage did she for a moment Sense all vegetable sap as current Of her own bloodstream, the green Flooding into the red? And when She achieved her final arboreal being, Shed dewy tears each dawn For that lost fleeting moment, That hint at freedom, In transit, between cage and cage? (From MIRRORED, MIRRORING published by Oxford University Press, Madras, 1991)