(based on An Ox Looks at Man by Carlos Drummond De Andrade)
They stone stumble tender feet over earth. They are aimless tracks. They backtrack for more. More machines. More meals. More more. They forget what they’ve left, how to paw-pad the land, how to savor its billowed scent. They’ve grown past their senses and sniff pine needles without listening to the tree’s evergreen speech. They never see the glaze of sap trails when we leave. Tenderness – which is the medicine in the tree, which is the medicine in everything – would impale them. Touching the world now might tear them, ravage their furless skin, leaving flesh tattered like their maps. Perhaps they are the allergy. Even as they fell and split the ancient ones, they create words for breaking life to pieces. Chords of wood. Lumber. They build things. They keep out the stars and shutter themselves against the wisdom the wind tells us. Their naked skin craves the warmth in our dens. Our pelts. Their ears play tricks on them, and they call me trickster, because they cannot hear, they say I walk on air, for I am on them before they understand, this wind is my song, praying my paws across the earth.
Jason Robison (he/him) studied creative writing and women’s studies at UC Davis and earned his MFA in creative writing from Mount Saint Mary’s University. He lives in Los Angeles where he enjoys his family, surfing and trying to end homelessness.
