This poem originally appeared in Issue No. 01 of Southlands. You can escape your screen and dive into a print version of the story by ordering a copy in our shop. And be sure to subscribe to receive the next two issues.
Wildness has no actuarial. This is to say, there is no accounting beyond birth, death, and survival. In the cracks between our counts that are just best guesses, there is nothing predictable or worthy of wagering on to gain windfall. Life comes. Life goes. Nothing is promised in the twain. A coyote snatches a spotted fawn from the doe that birthed and nursed it. A bee seeks bloom's sustenance, even as the goldfinch robs yellow flowers to skeletons to drop hope wrapped in a seed. It is immediate gratification and faith in what might be. An indigo bunting decorates sumac crown with cobalt blue, declaring the overgrown fencelines its kingdom. Blue grosbeak sees the bet and raises it. There are nests hidden somewhere holding hope in eggs or begging gapes. Most will not make the year's cycle to where their parents have. The phoebes moored their mossy hopes on an old wasp fortress. Was this a calculated move to say to all egg-eaters, black rat snake and otherwise, "Keep Out—Guarded by Stinging Security"? Turtle digs a muddy hole and deposits the future. Leaves all to chance. Racoon happens along, gets lucky and makes its own withdrawal, no apologies necessary. An anole, finger-sized but wild as any beast, found its way inside my Tin Can cabin. Trapped within the refuge built for my mental escape, it died in its tracks—midcreep—a sun-dried lizard once clothed in chameleon-esque colors lying still as stone, a monument to the one certainty any of us can count on.