Arboreality

They may have been lovers, 

but then, who’s to say? 

They in situ—  a besot situation.

Some ill-begot infatuation.  

 

The two of them lay upon the floor, 

just there, next to the front door. 

One spooning that of the other. 

And affection    affectation, 

and yet what is this lesson taught 

if not that such feral love be 

deemed by some god as scurrilous?

 

In Disney films, a 

squirrel meets a squirrel 

and there falls in love. 

In reality, each falls from a tree 

as result of my father’s shotgun. 

This an arboreality: 

ground-bound gravity 

gone grim gravitas. 

 

They say heaven lies 

in the sky above our heads, 

and if so, how much 

closer to that divine 

are those breaching crests 

of hallowed boughs and 

the squirrels which therein abide? 

Sacred?       No. 

 

There at our front door 

lies lead-laden proof that 

one can indeed fall from grace. 

A blessed gulf tumultuous. 

Yes, they which only a moment ago 

had as cherubim leapt aerial adept 

across a cathedral’s broad leafy arch. 

 

Words    fail us. 

And yet that need 

to    communicate. 

 

I, but a boy;   yet my father, 

   the didactic man, 

would here have me acquire an epiphany: 

yes, that every shiny coin turns copper 

upon one’s soon sunken eyes. 

That this life is naught 

but precursor to death. 

That you may clap hands all you want, 

but Tinker Bell’s spunk of spark is bunk. 

 

Rather, that there in the city 

some father might take his son 

to watch Bambi in the theatre, 

and there let loom 

a curdled comprehension 

that this fated fawn’s mother 

will not last ‘til the end of the film.

 

Those hunters… 

    Those hunters… 

Just what was it 

that they carried 

in their hands?

Some aspect of trauma. 

   Some aspect of death. 

Yet Disney spares us 

the sight of a somehow 

inanimate carcass. 

Yes, but my father? 

No.      

Not so much. 

 

These were formative years. 

My father attempting to make me a hunter. 

My mother’s devout desire that 

I there embrace her Christian faith. 

 

My father had a special board 

of which he’d use to 

field dress small game. 

And there the squirrel 

would be pinned by its paws. 

There its skin and fur 

delicately stripped away. 

There the gralloch process of 

removing bowels and heart. 

 

For this small boy, what 

remained upon that crimson board 

was less a squirrel and more   

that of a human form 

there deftly crucified. 

 

Off in the distance, a 

scurry of squirrels look down to see 

that one of their brethren has 

achieved a certain martyrdom. 

That later that night 

we will all partake 

of the body. 

 

Indeed, that of which we 

 

now decree 

 

quite divine. 

 

Ó 2023 Jack David Hubbell