Cultures, Experiencers Stories

Interspecies poetry, by Ana Daksina


By Ana Daksina

Well, I was debating with myself whether an interaction with a goose would be as appropriate for sharing with you as was the one with a bear — then along comes your whole amazing post about interactions with allanner of beasts! So maybe this is a good time/place to offer a second true story of unusual Interspecies interaction in my life. This one has actually appeared on my site, so it’s in rhyme, hope that’s okay.

Namaste and aho!

*****
Perhaps I Never Will
We came back to the farm that day
Where dogs had in our absence been
Describe to you the scene we found
I could not e’en begin
The custom in deep country is
If you let your dog get away
For someone else’s chickens
Ducks and geese prepare to pay
Nor will you seeing be
That dog ever again
The farmer has the given right
To shoot it there and then
Walking our farm I understood
They willing were to take one out
For feathered wildlife full of blood
Was strewn that ground all round about
Not even eaten — just destroyed
In malice and in sport
I might myself unto a rifle
Given chance had had resort
That cataclysm did provide
As cataclysms sometimes do
A most amazing story
Which I will tell to you:
Of all the carcasses that lay
About the farmstead strewn —
An aftermath of genocide
Upon a sunny afternoon —
A single goose survived
But did so with a broken wing
Being a goose there’d be no way
To put it in a sling
At that time but a callow girl
Sixteen years of age
And city bred, this in my life
Turned an untouched page
The closest I had ever been
To one of Nature’s creatures when
My sister’d got a hamster
Around the age of ten
The other people on that farm
To save the bird did not agree
They walked away and left
Its healing or its death to me
I sat down there beside it
Stroked its head and murmured low
That if it wished to live
That mangled wing would have to go
And that I really hated
What I’d have to put it through
And asked the goose what it prefer
That I prepare to do
Looking back, I should have been
In that moment more amazed
That when I lifted it to move
It didn’t get all crazed
But quietly lay in my arms
And let me take it to
The bathroom and into the tub
To see what I could do
Anyone skilled in medicine
Would hate me for the blundering
Ineptitude with which I cut
From that poor goose its wing
But strange to say, the bird itself
Not only didn’t hate me, it
Didn’t even slightly twitch
As I ministered to it
But settled down as though to help
A partner in a team of two
Me operating surgic’lly
The goose quietly pulling through
And pull through ‘gainst all odds
And expectation’s what it did
I always will be happy that I
Did as my good conscience bid
But sometimes stop to wonder:
How did that goose stay so, so still?
I still don’t understand it
Perhaps I never will
goose puppetgoose standing

6 thoughts on “Interspecies poetry, by Ana Daksina”

      1. Hey, I’m putting the word out and around that I’m looking for aware community into which to move my tent. Self supporting, can make rental contribution & help w/ light work round homestead. Just need a quiet friendly place to write. Happy to forward pic & more details, whatever helps. If anything along those lines floats into your awareness, holler back. Much love and light to you and on your wonderful work 😎

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      2. Thank you for your welcome, my brother. Right now I’m in California and living on a shoestring — tent home, feet for transportation. If there were someone else coming up the coast with an extra seat I could chip in for gas and pack in my food, but any admissions/activity fees would be past my abilities.

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