Thinking With Help From My Animal Kin Poem by Denis Mair

[for James Koehnline's collages posted Oct.12-23 on FB, especially the one below.]
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In ancient days a bard's apprentice was taught to identify with a quick swimming fish;

he may even have caught a glimpse of his own silvery scales.

He envisioned himself flying with birds, or running with deer;

he stalked with a lynx's elegance and built with a beaver's determination.

So much takes place outside of words, and then connects with words to give them power.

A human-sized hole in the world used to be filled in with transformations of animals;

such training used to be important for certain kinds of verbal combat.

But a trophy-sized hole in the world broke the connection of totems to words.

An aurochs-shaped hole in the ozone leaves cattle assembled on feedlots.

Due to a panther-sized hole in a snowstorm, my quest loses its edge of keenness,

even though Vitruvian Man projected onto a high-rise may confer a sudden sense of amplitude.

Alone now in a ruin that once welcomed bards, an apprentice sits fashioning a wreath of feathers, fur, and lichen tufts;

the full delineation of each form is interlaced with others.

There is a hole of no shape in the mysterious wreath, being filled with the face of a woman.

If a chain of words is to gain power, it must still ride upon half-hidden transformations.