The only mammals that can’t jump

Do you ever hunger for a taste you can’t seem to find
in anything you eat, but don’t know what exactly?

Do you walk more slowly in the rain, waiting
for some other rhythm with which to fall in step?

You used to keep notebooks of collected facts
which gathered and curled into themselves

in interesting shapes. You’d take them out
every now and then, thumbnails to your own

kind of hairball museum— Hot water is heavier
than cold. A shrimp’s heart resides in its head.

Beetles taste like apples, wasps like pine nuts,
worms like fried bacon. Despite or because of

the memes and .gifs inspired by Nicolas Deveaux’s
short film of an elephant on a trampoline,

the elephant is the only mammal that can’t
jump. And Leonardo da Vinci invented scissors,

that same implement which an American in Taiwan
dismantled into two blades yesterday, and used

to stab himself in a courtroom after the judge
sentenced him to four years in jail for illegal

possession of drugs. All the sad news
this week, all the much too young people

whose names were listed and whose brief
lives flickered like the jeweled flames

music makes in laying down a beat. And all
the stupid accidents on the road today

causing pileups. Still, you are convinced
that everyone and everything just wants

to be loved and understood, accounted for.
Even the single-file line of giraffes

walking gravely through the narrow tiled lane
leading to the high dive platform above the pool

—each one wants to touch noses with the upside-
down spotter before landing clean in the water.

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