I am not mad, my heart is so. Cliffside, oceanside,
Pacific sand dollars, dead and broken. I am everywhere
in neither form nor feeling, washed-up giant kelp,
sea glass. The fire, the flame, smoke, soot and ash. Beneath
your skin, warned by an angel. The air you breathe, full
of self-feeling, among the climate, self- conceit, the territory,
the instruments, the regime. Renewed in spirit, relapsed again. I am the feathers
and the bones, the little vesper bell
through whose sound prospective loss comes at you
in waves. I am there and I am who now doth crazy go; thus
the heated atmosphere of May be afflicted,
and tide-pull cliffside erosion emerges swift as dreams.
The examinations coming to a close, the great-horned owl
on the beach, near Malibu, pushed by fire to the end of the world,
rumple-feathered, this extraordinary event.
Ocean knows mountains afire and soon our fingertips
will know a certain shape, I wist. The burning this example
of my own violence, what that soft
balm pours, a different sort of weather. Ocean tells you.
I could not see if there were marks. The driving away
of wintertime feathered and unleashed. Shall fall thunder shall fall ash.
And if the gods chose to destroy us, certainly
they’ll send emissaries of madness.
Not an owl on the beach, climate’s edge,
but creatures of pure negation, to guide us towards this newer fire.
Beings unimaginable in this moment;
yet also, and always, recognizable, evident and notorious,
built out of our own image, mirror reflection,
ourselves.
jennifer calkins is an environmental litigator, evolutionary biologist, writer and creator, participant and curator in Delisted 2023 (@delisted2023). “owl on the beach” is included in Annihilation is Underway, a manuscript that is part of her collaborative project with Anne de Marcken. jennifer is the author of two lyric fiction/poetry books A Story of Witchery (Les Figues Press 2006) which will be released in a new edition by Punctum Books this year and Fugitive Assemblage (The 3rd Thing Press, 2020). She lives on the lands of the Coast Salish with creatures including, at times, young adult humans.
Note: The image of a great horned owl is sourced from Tom Koerner & the USFWS