The Way One Animal Trusts Another by Carl Phillips

The Way One Animal Trusts Another

 

              Somewhere between what it feels like, to be at

one with the sea, and to understand the sea as

mere context for the boat whose engine refuses

finally to turn over: yeah, I know the place—

stumbled into it myself, once; twice, almost.  All

around and in between the two trees that

grow there, tree of compassion and—much taller—

tree of pity, its bark more bronze, the snow

              settled as if an openness of any kind meant, as well,

a woundedness that, by filling it, the snow

might heal…You know what I think? I think if we’re

lost, you should know exactly where, by now; I’ve

watched you stare long and hard enough at the map

already…I’m beginning to think I may never

not be undecided, about all sorts of things: whether

snow really does resemble the broken laughter

              of the long-abandoned when what left comes back

big-time; whether gratitude’s just a haunted

space like any other.  This place sounds daily

more like a theater of war, each time I listen to it—

loss, surprise, victory, being only three of the countless

fates, if you want to call them that, that we don’t

so much live with, it seems, as live for now among.  If as

close as we’re ever likely to get, you and I, is this—this close—