Ask the Animals
by Rhett Watts
Wolf spider on a flat rock splays
an inky star. What does the galloping brook
sound like to her?
Chipmunk clutches a wild rose stalk.
Arcing, swaying over the stream, he gauges
the distance to the other bank.
Last Spring, mating river snakes roiled and
scooted through the drought-dry streambed—
marvelous entanglement.
One night, I joined our housecat at the window.
Under the streetlamp, a black bear ambled
to wherever it is she sleeps.
A home can be precarious. Given time,
given space, the heart may hold everything.
Maybe that is why we live so long.
Tiny hatchlings turtle through the grass.
Shells rough as the macadam they cross,
then plop into the creek. I lose count at fifty-three.
Rhett Watts has poems in journals including Sojourners Magazine, The Worcester Review, Canary, The Windhover, Radix, Amethyst Review, and in The Best Spiritual Writing 2000. Her books are: Willing Suspension (Antrim House Books), The Braiding (Kelsay Books), and, coming in 2025, The Double Nest (Fernwood Books). She facilitates writing workshops in CT and MA and lives by a brook with her husband and a Siberian cat, Hugo.
