Transcript

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

I am utterly addicted to my home security camera in the mountains in Vermont. Every morning I check notifications and watch new videos. I am less interested in catching an intruder. I look to discover nocturnal wildlife that roamed the surrounding forest while I slept.

My video feed features rafters of wild turkey, eastern coyotes, a weasel, and of, course, the ever-present white tail deer. Once, a video of a woodchuck lumbering out of its winter burrow to gather food. Another time, a purple finch (or was it a chickadee) hovered in front of the camera and flashed its plumage; when I replayed the video back in slow-motion on my phone, its beating wings revealed a complex skeletal system.

Creatures. They skulk. They stalk. They skitter. They lumber. They all stop for a second and look, their eyes hilariously reflecting and emitting the camera’s light, like the boy at the end of the classic video from Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” then resume on their way.

No video footage, yet, of a moose, which remains elusive, despite nearby tracks in the snow. Once, a brown bear ambled over to a trash shed. It ripped the door then gleefully turned upside down a week’s worth of food scraps in a kitchen bag. Although the damage to the shed was visible and would cost to repair, I enjoyed getting a glimpse of the bear, like the other animals, making do, scavenging, cruising the woods.

I enjoy the persistence of wildlife, despite verifiable research that many species are dwindling, even disappearing. Looking at my security camera each morning, I’m reminded daily that we share this earth with creatures of all varieties. This level of awareness is an ethical and moral one.

I love the implicit argument of this poem, that the protection of animals is vital to the environment. At the heart of the poem is an urging for us to exercise a consciousness of care, to become intimate with the lives of other species, rather than treat them as pests in need of control or worse obliteration.

Possum
by Todd Davis

In deep summer, when the creek dries up,
copperheads stir like water on limestone, ripples
that steal a gaze and stay you in place. The crossbands
on their backs, like hourglasses, run down to death.
Daddy carries a .22, shoots near anything that moves.
When he was a child, a sister lost part of an arm to venom.
Gangrene crawling like a colicky baby toward her breast.
Bone saw was the only thing to arrest it. Mamaw claims
a nick in the moon ushers in mating, musk like cucumbers
in the garden. I found my snake-killer riding the back
of his dead mother in the red gravel along the road.
Nose like a pink flower sticking up through matted fur.
I don’t know what happened to his brothers. Didn't check
the pouch. It was no secret what the tire did. I picked him up
like a sack of millet. He bared his teeth. Tiny opposable
thumbs clamped to my fuck-you finger. Don’t kill a possum.
They'll murder copperheads for you. Clear snakes
from stonewalls. Usher the dead from under squash
and pumpkin leaves. You should see him sit up
and take notice when I dangle a gizzard over his craw.
You'd swear a smile wrinkles that sour face.

“Possum” by Todd F. Davis from COFFIN HONEY © 2022 Todd F. Davis. Used by permission of Michigan State University Press.