WILDNESS COMES BACK The wild in America is contained, pushed back, owned by the people as a public treasure for all time. Thus it is separated from us and our settlements so that America can possess its wildness and be free from it, well-ordered. But the wildness comes back. In the abandoned pastures and on the rock ledges made by highway cuts, cedar saplings appear and then come up in crowds. Along the old fencerows and in carelessly-tended alleys trash trees--sumac, tree of heaven--spring out. Scavenger animals multiply, certain birds find the suburbs and cities to their liking, cracks in the asphalt or cement breed greenery suppressed elsewhere, the dumps draw colorful vermin to their feast. And the wildness takes over new types of habitat, as when the vines cover abandoned shacks and trailers, and the rodents shelter there. It takes on new forms that we don't at first recognize as the wild asserting itself: toxins and meth labs, birth anomalies and addictions, unchecked wealth confronted by ever-larger desires--these are wild, these are crawling over and under our safe buildings. We are crazy for guns, we have an insatiable desire for power, control, security. The law devours wildly, contempt for losers is a wild passion, money is the wildest thing of all. We make the largest explosions the world has ever known because the wildness is in us. We vote for it, we consume it, it eats away at us, it is the terror our eyes see everywhere, and we can't stop our hearts beating too fast, our breath coming out in shouts. We have a wild, violent desire to get a peace so endless it seems natural to do anything we can think of to obtain it.
next poem >>