Dominion

So close to understanding everything, we lacked
only the verb.

We had agency, that much was clear.
Why else would soft mists rise to decorate

the creek, halo the river?
Being water, we needed water, so why else

the rain, except to bless us,
fill our wells and cisterns, refill our sense

of superiority? We had been given dominion.
This was known.

These spectacular landscapes were designated
backgrounds

for our glorious rages and desires. Only the verb
remained inscrutable.

Only the verb stuck to the shadows,
skittered outside the circle

of our fires, eluded the sure grasp
of our opposable thumbs. We began to wonder,

to question, but distractibility
came hand-in-hand with cleverness.

In the end, we had no idea what to do,
how to prove

to the world and ourselves
that the world was indeed our dominion,

except to ruin it,
because that was our right.

So we ruined it.

Nightfall

In the small walled garden
of precisely right now,

a wild bird keeps knocking
its whole hollow-boned

richly feathered being
hard against an old pane

gleaming in a shed’s
window, the slow press

of darkness descending
over the luxuriant heads

of hydrangea blossoms
bent low to ground

by heavy rain— this hour
when all sorrows are the same.

Hayden Saunier’s most recent book is A Cartography of Home (Terrapin: 2021). Her work has been published in journals such as 32 Poems, Beloit Poetry Journal, Plume, Thrush, Virginia Quarterly Review, and has been awarded the Rattle Poetry Prize, Pablo Neruda Prize, and Gell Award, among others. She directs No River Twice, an interactive, audience-driven poetry reading/performance. More online at www.haydensaunier.com.

Published April 15 2023