T. R. Hummer: Think

It’s impossible sometimes to make your way

   through the undergrowth—think of Desoto,

Think of Cabeza de Vaca hacking down briars

   with a sword of blinding Toledo steel,

A sword, mind you! In Toledo they’ve made that metal

   since 500 BC, and de Vaca was a god, or so he said

To save his own hash, but even he was helpless

   before a wall of poison ivy, broken to sweat and spit

By impervious mandevilla. It’s a new continent every time,

   you’re a stranger, nothing knows how shining

And vital you are, and every time you get stuck

   In a bank of crappy fetterbush, you think of homo erectus

Broaching the cedars of Lebanon that are high and lifted up

   but fire comes out of the brambles. You want to speak

Like an angel of the clean cartography of your mind,

   but what comes out of your mouth is a tangled mess

Of thorned clichés. Think of Neil Armstrong

   lasering mountain laurel in the Sea of Tranquility.

Think of the first human in Paris hammering her way

   through impenetrable banks of tourists on the Champs-Élysées.

Think of your body, or the left eye of the white baneberry. Think

   of launching the lifeboats into the viney deep. Think of the children. 

Copyright 2022 T.R. Hummer

T.R. Hummer’s many books include Available Surfaces: Essays on Poesis (University of Michigan Press, 2012).