POETS’ CORNER: FEELA FOR THANKSGIVING

21 Nov POETS’ CORNER: FEELA FOR THANKSGIVING

Editor’s note: Author/poet/recently retired teacher-writing instructor David Feela is, like Wordwoman Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, a regular contributor to Telluride Inside… and Out. And like Rosemerry, is brilliant and very very quirky. Witness his contribution for Thanksgiving, not a Feela original – though David certainly is. David Feela’s latest book, “How Delicate These Arches: Footnotes from the Four Corners,” a collection of essays, is available at Between the Covers Bookstore.

Bounty

From peak to desert basin,
one way to stay alive
is not as Darwin supposed,

that all species must subscribe
to the dictum of the fittest.
What the beetle knows

goes valiantly into the bird
that eats it, and the bird
syllogizes like a philosopher

before being swallowed
by the cat.  Mouse, badger, buck —
the land teems with opportunity.

What we know is to take
until we are taken.
Survival, as simple as that.