Large Carnivore Biology

two gloved hands press around a helicoptering heart
his ears rabbit, his retinas shine, a wet forest prince
mama is mothering, she hoofs circles around us
and breathes hot anger on my neck
with a click, the fawn is fitted with a telemetry collar
and I wonder if that means he is now mine
 
I am always foraging
even though my hands are empty, I name the animals:
odocoileus hemionus, radiolarian chert, arctostaphylos manzanita
and I wonder if that means they are now mine
the woman Eve had a great business of naming
and I was raised in her tradition
if the language I speak was a verb
it would be the act of standing, pointing, and saying, “Look!”
 
a prayer is a promise of work
so let this be mine
my research will instead be a neighboring
my foraging a greeting
and my view of the forest a peopling
 
they say wilderness is a place you can visit but never stay:
lest you or that wilding place become what either of you are not
these are what the settlers of hard ecologies will tell you
as if people haven’t been gardening for thousands of years
or the gardens wilding the people
 
I once collared a forest prince while his mother
beat her breast and cursed me
the Deer People must frown at me now
maybe the adrenaline I felt
when my hands pressed his knubby, precious body
was a kincentric snap of connection
a transforming of us into relatives
a relationing, which is really an upholding
of consent and reciprocal obligation
or maybe it was more of a remembering
this process is slow
meanwhile, young, angry princes harden into bucks
and bloody their antlers with stripped velvet

In Braiding Sweetgrass, Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer describes Potawatomi as a language that is based on a grammar of animacy and English as a language that is based on a grammar of objectification. English is primarily composed of nouns, whereas the majority of Potawatomi words are verbs. Inspired by Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book, the above poems plays with personification, verbs, and scientific jargon to question how we can redefine the way we communicate with the ecological world.