I, too, have seen the map, scanned
east to west, found borders there,
and wondered if an umlaut alone
can sunder us into tribes.
In Kherson Oblast, over one
thousand one hundred days,
geese, ducks, and the rest hunted
along its marshes and gullies.
If you’d gone, you would
have heard the call of the Black-backed
Gull, which, if the Bearded Reedling
and Rustic Bunting belonged here, belongs here.
You’d have seen those scrappers
making their way without talon
or stealth but with a kind of resentment
bucked up into functional bravado.
And if you’d been one thousand
one hundred days in Kherson Oblast,
you’d be forgiven, watching those gulls
drop expertly among bough and twig,
for adopting a naturalistic fallacy
regarding progress in nature, regarding
the power and virtue of forgetting
whole histories, our own
under selective allure, when
as birds we obeyed the strut and fluff
of rank, learned to abnegate, lying
flat against the block, sure enough
someone’s god would be able
to stipple and thread and marble
our remains into something
greater than a fine, fine hat.
Rip Underwood owned a dental lab in Austin, Texas for many years, but has retired and wishes to devote his energies to finding outlets for his poetry. His work has appeared in Volney Road Review, Change Seven, Poet’s Choice, Poetry Super Highway, and more.
