The Naturalist

 

Spring unleashed: the valley green again,
    bird song contending in the clear air –
        and a boy turning over decaying logs.

How old the world is:
    this goldfinch a spark from the Cretaceous,
        these hills moulded by the last great ice age.

And the boy turning over logs
    (poised to seize that lizard
        or the beetle scrambling under moist leaves)

is one of the world’s newest tenants
    looking down at some of its oldest
        in wonder.

He might have been a young tribesman
    kneeling in the tinder-dry grass of the prairie
        keenly setting traps

or huntsman fingering fresh prints
    on a wet jungle track, his pulse quickening,
        and wondering, calculating.

He’s fired up with curiosity,
    hard-wired to observe, to deduce;
        he’s down close – but his mind is in orbit.

 

© John Looker 2018

 

Dedicated to a grandson and one of the poems in my recent book Poems for my Family (Bennison Books 2018, through Amazon).

 

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