Shedding Wilderness
/Jonathan Greenhause
The egret, her beak muddied, fishes
on beanstalk legs
by the pebble-strewn & infinite
laid-down ladder of the freight tracks,
snacks on frogs scared into stillness
at the runoff’s plastic shore,
is perplexed to find herself
this far South, misses the occasional
Aurora Borealis show
& the primal threat of autumnal snow.
Above, upon this car-wide overpass,
I briefly observe her,
feel rushed to arrive to an office
devoid of outstretched wings,
lacking nests, shedding wilderness
like a virus slathered
with the foam of antibacterial soap,
my fingers intertwined
in a rusted diamond fence, as I scan
this abyss between us,
this avian diner appeasing her belly
before the waiting sky’s caressed
by her plumage,
lower limbs snuggled to her body
like a child rocked to sleep
by the wind, as if
in an unraveling cot at risk
of falling, uncertain of where she is.
Author’s Note: The genesis of “Shedding Wilderness” is pretty straightforward: It was written shortly after the experience of viewing an egret fishing by flooded train tracks as I stared down from an overpass on my walk from home to work one morning. I live right across the Hudson from Manhattan, yet am still privileged to see occasional wildlife, whether it be turkeys, deer, racoons, skunks, possums, snakes, herons, hawks, groundhogs, or field mice. At the same time, these brief glimpses of nature can’t help but remind me of all that we’ve lost.
Jonathan Greenhause won the Telluride Institute’s 2020 Fischer Poetry Prize, and his poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in FreeFall, The Ginkgo Prize for Ecopoetry, New York Quarterly, Permafrost, Poetry East, RHINO, and Tampa Review. This is his 3rd time appearing in Roanoke Review.
