Behaving

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem 

If I could be my Prospero, some hours

Perhaps, perceive the cosmos through his eyes

While hiding underneath a shrub from showers

Of English rain; or taste the twitching thighs

Of mice inside their painless fur, or hear

Their ultrasonic squeaks in throes of death;

If I could know his bottlebrush of fear

In tail, or smell the robin’s dying breath

Inside the greed of nostrils, lovely pink

While killing; and if I could understand

The beauty of an ear- or face-scratch, slink

With joy away from threatening human hand —

  If all of these could fill my human mind,

    Would I be still so godlessly purblind?

~ Phillip Whidden