Month: October 2002

I was struck by Wagoner’s “Thoreau and the Snapping Turtle” because I had just finished my series of essays on Thoreau and was, like most readers, struck by Thoreau’s sensitivity and deep commitment to Nature. In fact, it’s hard to think of the “nature movement” in modern America without thinking of Thoreau. I must admit that my simple admiration for Thoreau derived from my high school years had been somewhat diminished by Thoreau’s egotism and self-righteousness at several points in Walden Pond. Thus, Wagoner’s poem added even more to a more mature, critical view of Thoreau.

Although this isn’t my favorite David Wagoner poem, in some ways it seems to illustrate his genius more clearly than any other single poem as it combines his sharp insight into human nature with his deep sensitivity for nature:

Thoreau and the Snapping Turtle

[It] looked not merely repulsive, but to some extent terrible even as a crocodile… a very ugly and spiteful face.
-Thoreau, Journal, May 17, 1854

As his boat glided across a flooded meadow,
He saw beneath him under lily pads,
Brown as dead leaves in mud, a yard-long
Snapping turtle staring up through the water
At him, its shell as jagged as old bark.

He plunged his arm in after it to the shoulder,
Stretching and missing, but groping till he caught it
By the last ridge of its tail. Then he held on,
Hauled it over the gunwale, and flopped it writhing
Into the boat. It began gasping for air

Through a huge gray mouth, then suddenly
Heaved its hunchback upward, slammed the thwart
As quick as a spring trap and, thrusting its neck
Forward a foot at a lunge, snapped its beaked jaws
So violently, he only petted it once,

Then flinched away. And all the way to the landing
It hissed and struck, thumping the seat
Under him hard and loud as a stake-driver.
It was so heavy, he had to drag it home,
All thirty pounds of it, wrong side up by the tail.

His neighbors agreed it walked like an elephant,
lilting this way and that, its head held high,
A scarf of ragged skin at its throat. It would sag
Slowly to rest then, out of its element,
Unable to bear its weight in this new world.

Each time he turned it over, it tried to recover
By catching at the floor with its claws, by straining
The arch of its neck, by springing convulsively,
Tail coiling snakelike. But finally it slumped
On its spiky back like an exhausted dragon.
He said he’d seen a cutoff snapper’s head
That would still bite at anything held near it
As if the whole of its life were mechanical,
That a heart cut out of one had gone on beating
By itself like clockwork till the following morning.

And the next week he wrote: It is worth the while
To ask ourselves… Is our life innocent
Enough? Do we live inhumanely, toward man
Or beast, in thought or act? To be successful
And serene we must be at one with the universe.

The least conscious and needless injury
Inflicted on any creature is
To its extent a suicide. What peace-
Or life-can a murderer have?… White maple keys
Have begun to fall and float downstream like wings.

There are myriads of shad-flies fluttering
Over the dark still water under the hill.

The startling contrast between Wagoner’s objective description of the turtle’s capture and resulting demise and Thoreau’s idealistic entries in his journal the next week makes us re-examine not only Thoreau’s commitment to nature but also our own. Wagoner’s description is so matter-of-fact that we see the situation clearly, as if seen through the lens of the television camera. It’s only near the end of the description in lines like “as if the whole of its life were mechanical” and “That a heart cut out of one had gone on beating” that we begin to see how different Wagoner’s view of the episode is from Thoreau’s view. But Wagoner’s careful selection of lines from Thoreau’s journal makes it crystal clear that Wagoner sees through Thoreau’s hypocrisy, or at least Thoreau’s blindness to his own prejudices.

Lines like “Is our life innocent enough?” and “the least conscious and needless injury inflicted on any animal is to its extent a suicide” make it perfectly clear that in Thoreau’s mind the turtle was somehow exempt from these rules, though how he could have felt that way is hard to imagine.

In some ways, this poem reminds me of Carolyn Kizer’s “ The Ungrateful Garden” where the mother rejects the bat because it has lice. Or, more politically relevant, it follows the recent argument of several Republican legislators that it was perfectly acceptable to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge because is “wasn’t even beautiful.”

When we are only capable of seeing the world from man’s viewpoint, we are apt to miss the miracle of life itself.

Traveling Light unlike Wagoner’s last collection of poems includes selections from his earlier volume of poetry called Who Will be the Sun? Sometimes I think having lived in the Northwest so long that I, like the Northwest Indians, also see nature in everything. Ravens, Salmon, and Killer Whale have grown sacred to me, too. My favorite poem in this section, though, comes not from an Indian legend I was familiar with, but one I had never heard before:

Old Man, Old Man

Young men, not knowing what to remember,
Come to this hiding place of the moons and years,
To this Old Man. Old Man, they say, where should we go?
Where did you find what you remember? Was it perched in a tree?
Did it hover deep in the white water? Was it covered over
With dead stalks in the grass? Will we taste it
If our mouths have long lain empty?
Will we feel it between our eyes if we face the wind
All night, and turn the color of earth?
If we lie down in the rain, can we remember sunlight?

He answers, I have become the best and worst I dreamed.
When I move my feet, the ground moves under them.
When I lie down, I fit the earth too well.
Stones long underwater will burst in the fire, but stones
Long in the sun and under the dry night
Will ring when you strike them. Or break in two.
There were always many places to beg for answers:
Now the places themselves have come in close to be told.
I have called even my voice in close to whisper with it:
Every secret is as near as your fingers.
If your heart stutters with pain and hope,
Bend forward over it like a man at a small campfire.

Perhaps I like this so much because as I’m becoming an “old man,” or maybe that’s because I’m an old man, I feel like I’ve discovered truths I wasn’t aware of when I was younger and “wiser.” I must admit, of course, that it’s never really clear in the poem whether this is actually an old man or, rather, some natural force in the “hiding place of the moons and years,” like the “man-in-the-moon.”

Like most young men, these young men feel like they will find “truth” “out there.” They are on a quest to find truth. As if it could be found in “the sky” (perched in a tree), in the “water” or on the earth (dead stalks of grass). Can they find it if they face the elements alone? If you deprive yourself of sunlight, “lying down in the rain,” can you remember sunlight?

I particularly like the line, “I have become the best and worst I dreamed” because that often seems true. Both our dreams and our nightmares come true, perhaps because they lie so close to our heart. Perhaps it takes “becoming” to truly discover truth; the truth is what we have become.

The ultimate truth, though, is that the important truths aren’t “out there,” or at least you can’t find them out there. You can only find them when something within you responds to what is out there. If your heart “stutters with pain and hope,” you know you are sensing something true, but that’s not enough. You also have to tinder that flame, protect it from being blown out, pay heed to it until it is able to survive by itself.