BOOKS
His fear is of being broken,
of becoming too dexterous in stripping
the last few shoelaces of meat
from a chicken's carcass ....
343
Although some positions on the food chain are more enviable
than others, the most basic reason for work is to feed ourselves. It is
not coincidental, then, that
Half Promised Land
should include the
work of animals whose principal occupation is survival.
I hate to see it : a bird so crafty, so sure,
moving in where it's easier to eat
and then grow dim . What logic
sends them here and not so far away
only field-hands know them? Maybe
they come to us, to live among us
so they can claim it as their choice–
which makes them proud and bright ,
though does not cease their doom ,
nor preserve their haughty, haunting cry.
("The Crows of Boston and New York")
He tells of "The Thirst of Turtles":
Both wise and clumsy, like us, feeding
in ever-widening or diminishing circles
and "Tarantulas on the Lifebuoy" who are saved through human
intervention, and of:
... an owl
soaring home after the shift he loves,
a fat sack of field mice under his wing.
("The Night So Bright A Squirrel Reads")
Like Theodore Roethke's work, Lux's poems are given to
moody apprehensions, yet they celebrate the earth.
A
poem that
begins with "Like a wide anvil from the moon the light" concludes:
here 's to the clouds the color of bone,
