This river tongued by one million cattle,
my hands searching the foam for signs—
I hope that by submerging my face
I’ll force those who believe in fate from the trees,
a trick that ends with my hands pressing
academic texts against their eyelashes. I wait
for their frustration, resignation, repentance.
I look to Linnaeus
for how not to lump a poison apple
with evolution—how could we not
end up here? Very goddamned easily,
that’s how. I look to the Krebs Cycle
to Mendelian genetics
to the heart-sized conglomerate
that materializes when I squeeze
my fist. There it is—the antipathy
in gravity. I look to the scientific method,
its edges clawed inside-out
so that humankind kneels against the weight
of its collective squeezed fist.
Our subspecies are long gone
but we still talk of cave people,
the intellect of the fateful winnowing
on the petroleum in their clothing
and the inconsequential discussion
of size that changes based on Foster’s
Rule. Bipeds become giants
despite the smoothness of their superior organs.
I look to mitotic cell division
when I am overwhelmed by groupthink—
a poisoned logic. Our eye cells
are dividing now and now and now
but just as I achieve the quiet required
to embody my own marrow, the marrow itself
runs out—gone in my narrow perception
of time. There’s always reincarnation
which exists by way of fungus
but we keep arguing about it
like it’s an unsupported hypothesis.
I am comfortable with its truth,
my mind awake inside the rapids.
Perhaps my own reincarnation has cycled
enough for me to recognize my oneness
with mycelia. Of course I am frightened.
But I understand that fear will not spare me
from secondary succession, from the bursting
of new growth forests through what was
my soft flesh.
I look to
I look to
I look to a river that digests me
washes my tumultuous existence
whether the process is beautiful
or not.
S. A. Leger is a writer and ornithologist based in St. John’s, Newfoundland (Ktaqmkuk). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Pleiades: Literature in Context, The Hopkins Review, The Los Angeles Review, THRUSH Poetry Journal, and Third Coast. She was shortlisted for the Apogee Poetry Chapbook Award and was the runner-up for the NLCU Fresh Fish Award. Her best days are spent at a cabin in the woods with her wife and dachshund.
