The Inhabitants

THE INHABITANTS

There’s a cove in a creek 

where the light doesn’t reach 

the bottom, and in the woods

behind someone’s house a grove 

of hemlock trees, branches inter-

locked. Just trust me, 

and let’s leave them there, 

unexplored. Or explore them,

if you must, but outcomes are

limited, and increasingly grim. 

Say you find them, the inhabitants,

and never return to tell about it. 

Your family will miss you

at the dinner table, with not even

the closure of a body

to help trap the steam

from your rapidly cooling plate.

Or maybe you find them

and return to tell about it, 

but no one believes you, or cares. 

History knows the type—

it's a slow and agonizing descent

into something akin to death.

Speaking of slow and agonizing deaths, 

what’s most likely is that 

you don’t find anything

out of—for lack of more original

terms—the ordinary:

some silt settled at the bottom,

flash of small carp, light

latticed like fingers to cradle

the leaves on the forest floor,

the inhabitants conditioned

to evade the unblinking stare

of the test tube and keep a step ahead

of nosers like you.

It will be, instead, but another paper cut 

on the already flayed child 

you keep locked in the inner room,

that little martyr weeping

and waiting for the day the inhabitants

break in to release him, 

carrying him on their

shoulders, scales, or wings,

and rejoicing in their various

and once-unintelligible

voices as they bear him, laughing,

to the land of such children

who didn't need to look

to know the marvels

pulsing in their very temples.