Suppose, one spring, the birds decided
not to fly north, and the animals
sleeping in the woods decided this year
they’d rather not wake, and turned over instead
for another dream.
Imagine one summer the butterflies decided
to stay in their cocoons, or the caterpillars forgot
to wrap themselves up inside themselves
and simply gorged themselves instead
until their season passed. One day the tide forgot to rise.
This is only one way of speaking for the world.
Suppose the spiders stopped weaving, mosquitoes
forgot how to suck our blood, bees
decided not to pollinate flowers.
Suppose the sea turtles never returned
to the beaches that bore them, to lay their moon-drawn eggs.
Or suppose for a moment the rivers held still
and the leaping salmon held still in mid-air.
Imagine fire stopped burning things to ash
although it still burned. It was no longer hot.
Of course that couldn’t happen. So think of something else.
This poem first appeared in The Halo of Bees: New and Selected Poems, 1990-2022.
—
Michael Hettich has published a dozen books of poetry, most recently The Halo of Bees: New and Selected Poems, 1990-2022. His work has appeared widely in journals as well as in a few anthologies. His awards include The Brockman-Campbell Prize from the North Carolina Poetry (for Halo), the inaugural Hudson-Fowler Prize from the University of Central Arkansas, a number of Fellowships from the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs, and the Tampa review Prize. He lives in Black Mountain, NC.
