Instinct
Today I mow green pastures,
scatter manure to dust
and keep my mown rows edge to edge.
I anticipate the turn at the fence, the moment
I’ll accelerate and lean in to that arc,
momentum’s sweet spot.
When I watch bicyclists
in traffic, I know what they feel
by the slant of their shoulders,
the tilt of their heads as they join the flow.
When did I first encounter this sensuous thrill?
Did I lean in to the shape of my mother’s womb
to ride her morning rising, a bauble
in the ocean swirls beneath her ribs?
In the wake of another turn,
I think of swimming laps
and the flip at the wall, that push
that wreathes a curl of water at the neck.
Seals must relish their supple trajectories.
Hummingbirds careen as if joy incarnate.
A flock of gray doves lifts
from the adjacent pasture and swerves midair—
a boomerang rising on silver light.
I circle once and then again, this inclination
more about being, rather than creating, the curve.
Kathleen Condon
Bindweed Magazine 