In the poem, “The Suzerain Speck,” I learned, and became obsessed with, how to write the poem through the perspective of some other thing and since then have been either blogging about some iteration of this idea or notebooking some variation of this poetry form.
I began to write several poems from the perspective of Hesse’s Siddhartha through the filter of my belief system. Many of the poems were, I felt, successful however when I found myself meditating on Siddhartha at the stream another creature began to sniff around at his crossed legs, illuminated brow and lily pads.
As if one Hesse novel bled
itself into another – if I’d dream of Siddhartha I would be interrupted by the Steppenwolf as some pup searching for his pack, freed from his cage, taunting Siddhartha the way he’d taunt Herr Haller as a boy.
I set the Siddhartha poems aside and decided, instead, to pay mind to my Steppenwolf pup instead. While every word Hesse ever wrote impacted me in such a way that from the onset of the first page of each book I shall forever remain changed – the Steppenwolf has always found his way to permeate my soul and body without reserve.
I began to read about the Gray Wolf and wrote scribbled ideas in the side of notebooks and poetry books I was reading. In addition to this studying I’ve recently finished a class with Burgh Bees on honeybee keeping, with this in mind I began to read Nick Flynn‘s book, “Blind Huber,” which is a series of poems about the art and history of beekeeping. Many of Flynn’s poems were reflecting the same connection to the bees that I was experiencing towards the Gray Wolf; the first of the wolf poems came out in the margin of a poem about the queen bee wanting to die in a specific way… The wolf pup began to sniff around, searching for his mother.
The pup sniffs at cold where
a killing of, simply, too much
to eat alone had left a scent
redolent of pack.
His breath – a slow drift
steam, shifting, a quick
fog as, in the stream,
he out-tricks his reflection –
and to an image of ether his
breath (as everyone stands
wrapped in arms, pose, held
smile – steam, resembling
the face moved, by aperture)
moved by interest
in anything else but this…
“Mother,” he sniffs, “alpha.”
He snarls, “Judy. Never mention Judy.
We. Never. Talk. About. Judy.”
Shaken loose by a wet memory
he whimpers… “Judy.”
His paw to bare snow, and slick
as a flashback hallucinating
an instant decades passed;
the sound of that bartender
pint glass-plunge into the ice
bucket – crunch… “I am sitting
below her bar stool, I am heeling,
mouth closed waiting
for the reinforcer, she loves
me as I do her.” The whiskey
stench of his mother tongue
against his neck fur…
Tracking the eidolon of perfume
in the hallways of some dark
night club; sunlight, bathing
through tree branches,
dancing the komorebi; her scent
on pine bark, paw prints in snow,
her icy reflection in the stream,
dancing the ignis fatuus.
His nostrils yawn at the memory
of canines bared in a snarl,
eyes distend in tears at the howl,
the teeth and gum glare..
the pup sniffs at cold where
a killing of, simply, too much
to handle alone has left a scent
redolent of her grief…
-...Running From Zero...+ 