American Life in Poetry: ‘Wild Life’ by Grace Cavalieri

There are few writers who have done more to promote the work of other writers than Grace Cavalieri, who lives in the nation’s capitol. She has a radio show, “The Poet and the Poem” from the Library of Congress, she writes book reviews and is a tireless advocate for poetry day in and day out. All this while writing her own poems and plays. Her most recent book of poems is “With” (Somondoco, 2016).

Wild Life

Behind the silo, the Mother Rabbit

hunches like a giant spider with strange calm:

six tiny babies beneath, each

clamoring for a sweet syringe of milk.

This may sound cute to you, reading

from your pulpit of plenty,

but one small one was left out of reach,

a knife of fur

barging between the others.

I watched behind a turret of sand. If

I could have cautioned the mother rabbit

I would. If I could summon the

Bunnies to fit him in beneath

the belly’s swell

I would. But instead, I stood frozen, wishing

for some equity. This must be

why it’s called Wild Life because of all the

crazed emotions tangled up in

the underbrush within us.

Did I tell you how

the smallest one, black and trembling,

hopped behind the kudzu

still filigreed with wanting?

Should we talk now of animal heritage, their species,

creature development? And what do we say

about form and focus—

writing this when a stray goes hungry, and away.

Poem copyright 2016 by Grace Cavalieri, from The Broadkill Review, (Vol. 10, issue 2, 2016), and reprinted by permission of the author and publisher. American Life in Poetry is supported by the Poetry Foundation and the English department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. We do not accept unsolicited submissions.