I revel in nature’s strong drink; giddy and filled, flushing and bright
Tell me what you know about the moss, the birds, the moon
Tell me what you know about herpetology, stratigraphy, mycology
I don’t want to strip the world bare and raw to find out
Teach me to ask, always to ask. Ever curious, learned by inquisition
Teach me to hold my liquor. To be respectful. Erudite, but gentle
Teach me to hold the snake, the crab, the beetle, the toad
Don’t ask me to measure, to sum, to find a standard deviation
Lest I slosh my drink and it spills all over your hypotheses
Don’t ask me to observe and record unless it be
With eye and pen and purely qualitative, beauty beheld
Let me see a reef, a mangrove, a fjord. Deltas and dunes
I am drunk on the salt-rimmed ocean, a landscape on the rocks
Don’t make me reduce this to a number, no matter how divisible
I am drunk on a dry forest, on muddled air, with swimmy vision
Don’t make me kill the wonders of the woods, this magic
I soaked in through conversational absorption, osmosis, endocytosis
I will not gather data or record it on a spreadsheet, but I will listen
To what you gleaned from study and scrutiny and analysis
Yours is a cerebral pursuit, but driven by the same adoration
So I will listen and learn from you and beg you to put down the ruler
And drink deeply from nature’s tap, its earth grown cocktail
Sickly sweet sap, nectar, bitters, and brackish water
Until your tongue slurs in brook song, laughing and rolling
Until your eyelids are drooping, heavy like flowerheads under rain
Until you marvel, stumbling in a world more glorious when unfettered
By the arrogance of definitives and calculated finality.
—
Hope St. John is a college student who enjoys writing as her creative outlet. Raised in Maine and living elsewhere, her work includes themes of place, nature, and faith. Much of her creative nonfiction and poetry is inspired by the people around her.
