Los Angeles Pastoral

posted Jun 12, 2012

I believed I could tame anything. 

In tall lot weeds, a still eye
swings from the cat’s jaw,
eye still gazing, still hunted. 
The cat smears my path
with blood and lust. 
These weeds are full
of beasts, and wild. 

With nothing for instinct,
I knew nothing of fear

I chase away the soft
pressure of bees and moths
digging into every daisy’s face,
every thready follicle
stuck deep with legs and hairs.
I cannot bear the hot, sweet
winging away of their powder.

or flight, or how the two
sleep curled on the same

All summer I fill a terrarium with spiders
but soon tire of catching
their meals. I release them
onto the road
and watch their forelegs
scooping the white waves
of shimmering asphalt as
the terrible vibrations roll nearer.

side of the heart, one waking
always the other.

I gather no more after the tree frog
I cupped from a pothole. 
Raised to my face, her marbled,
mottled skin mimics the perfect
pattern of river stones.
She trembles, so high up,
and when her little running heart
catches itself,
she launches away, onto a stone
on the flat of her back.

When I was afraid
I held still. 

I see then the dozen tadpoles
navigating my foot’s curves.
And suddenly I know all the ones
pressed beneath me,
their tender weight,
my own tender branches
running with first sap.

Melody Gee lives in St. Louis and teaches writing at St. Louis Community College. Her book, Each Crumbling House was published in 2010 and received the Perugia Press Book Prize. Her poems and essays have recently appeared in Copper Nickel, Town Creek Poetry, Connotation Press, and The Collagist.

We’ve published two more poems by Gee: “A Phrase By Rote” and “Sparrow.”