Nesting

Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.

                                                                                                                      —Groucho Marx

Winning is such a great feeling, isn’t it?  Nothing like winning. You got to win.
                               —Donald Trump, graduation speech at US Naval Academy, May 2018

August heralds in the dog days of summer—not much going on—the hands of the clock pausing at lethargy, bad luck, and mad dogs —before finally sticking on hot.  It’s vacation time—not a therapist or a plumber to be found.

So it might be time to take a breath between innings of the interminable baseball season to consider the nature of sport and the human need for competition. What drives our will to win—and sometimes at all costs? Whether it’s sports, business or politics—we as humans like to be “number one.”

What will we do to gain a “competitive edge?” Sports have been plagued with performance enhancing drugs and rule bending, business has subcategories for fraud, embezzlement, and bribery, and politics is the ultimate game of corruption and defining “alternate facts” in order to enhance one’s position in the pecking order.

As we prepare our nests for the autumn winds and the coming winter chill we should also consider the “art” of cooperation.  Too often these days we hear about the U.S. failing to cooperate with the international community on policy ranging from trade to arms, immigration, and climate change. We need to put aside the belief that winning is what it’s all about and work toward achieving a consensus for the benefit of all people regardless of where they sit on the fence.

As former President Bill Clinton said, ““When times are tough, constant conflict may be good politics but in the real world, cooperation works better. After all, nobody's right all the time, and a broken clock is right twice a day.” 

Nesting

A flat lined breast, heavily veined,

it’s nipple loose and withered

keeps pumping in measured increments.

Instinct, the corollary of survival,

feeds on legs battered in a marathon whose route is defined by perseverance and circumstance.

The race is a sham, the winners have been

predetermined, but the charade persists,

as if a nightingale’s song was performed

for the opportunity to roost on a branch

laden with newly formed fruit.

Below the surface sound erupts,

laced with a strident staccato—

the call of a damp fever caught between

crumbling walls and crashing waves.

Limbs, feathers and fronds emerge, caked with 

ambition, waking with low labored breathing.

Eager incisors and frenzied mandibles,

churn in a determined minuet,

locked in steps that repeat the motion prescribed by the turn of the tide buckled in tandem with the glow of an autumn moon.

Advantage diggers, chewers and weavers,

burrowing, paddling, spinning, roots, rocks, 

rivulets, tilted, tumbled, twisted.

Frightened slits watch the dawn,

summoning the strength to make the run.

Dancing flames on the first turn,

torrents surging on the pole,

an obstinate tempest on the back stretch.

Rules disregarded, upstarts in contempt,

integrity waning in the grasp, the finish in sight.

Wind raking the last turn, sinew and tenacity defining the path,cut with the wonder and anticipation of an elusive refuge that lies 

beyond the next turn.