In the beginning, the ending was beautiful.
She told me this, recalled a brazen, blazing
spring strung out into a chronicle
of eternal heat; flowers which did not know
when, or how, to drop dead. Catherine Pierce
said the earth was made soft
with the scent of cherry blossoms, primroses
and poppies, and that the land always heaved
a faint hum of flushed exhaustion, exhaled
tired balmy days, incandescent skies
and premature daisy fields birthed
next to hot asphalt highways. Catherine Pierce
told me that
it was lovely, and I think of
warmer waters and a childhood wish
for an immortal summer. Afternoons aflame
with humid promise. She said they awoke
to daffodils and languid coyotes
sleeping in beds of dew wrung grasses. That,
against the shaking and simmering
of the soil, bobcats crept through floral thickets
looking for sun seeking prey. Catherine,
what was it like to watch a weary creature
lay down and surrender their hunger?
Was it beautiful, that acceptance
of the futility of the hunt in the heat?
The assenting sleep against a picturesque
and poisoned landscape? She echoes,
it was lovely. Catherine,
my dog sleeps belly-up to the sun
and I have seen kookaburras strewn mellow
in backyards, too fatigued to flee
the ebullient awe of encroaching humans.
I have heard a man declare he was chosen
because a panting lorikeet, wings
outstretched, let him close; because
fairytale anthropomorphism is easier
to understand than sickness, than
an animal too unwell to act out fear.
How charming is this domestic mirage
masking what we have done.
When we talk, Catherine Pierce asks me
if I have heard the subtle, muffled cries
of our
beautiful crisis; and I tell her
about the sound of the green and gold
scarab beetles as they crawl their way out
of a soiled slumber to greet me earlier each year.
I tell her of the tree in my neighbourhood
whose leaves no longer throw themselves into a rage
of crisp crimson all winter, only retain their summer green
for the mid-year solstice. I tell her about the bees arriving
before the frosted June flowers and together we wonder
if disappointment and anticipation taste
like nectar. We talk about the mistimings of it all.
Near the end, we were eyeletted.
Loose bodies in the breeze and bare feet
and an animal desire to follow the warmth.
The deafening rumble of the fever. Catherine Piece
whispers to me that we are built to chase
the heat even when we are burning.
At least it's starting gentle.
At least we have time to pretend. To say
that it wasn’t all bad. Catherine Pierce,
can an ending be beautiful? I must
know. Can a demise be relished?
What happens when it isn’t just
an entrancing peculiarity anymore?
I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.
What do we do
when we are roused out of gentle naivety?
When the mouth of the sun leaves
the imprint of its molars across
our shoulders and its fingers wedged
deep beneath our skin? When we are too hot
to sleep? When only our veins remember
the rhythmic pulse of the cicadas?
What do we do when we are awake?
I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.
Catherine Pierce talks of the persistent murmur
and I think of the beetles and the flaming tree and
the parrot cradled between the chosen man’s hands.
I hear the petals thudding against the pseudo-summer
ground. The rise and fall of the dirt as another
sleeping animal is mourned.
Catherine Pierce talks of the persistent murmur
and I know it is the scream of the
Pastoral Anthropocene.
