Swamp Thing
I
Apparently you’ve got to be
vulnerable if you want
anything to happen,
and on the other side of it
you’ve got to be unfathomably
strong in order to get by.
In order to get through the attacks
and rejections occasioned
by vulnerability you’ve got to
be almost invulnerably
strong. It’s a difficult road map
to fold, friends. The shifts in logic
are very subtle, they have
to do with generational time
and we don’t have that
kind of time lying around
in the store-room, we’ve got
to get it on special order,
which means you’ve got to
read about a thousand books.

II
So, to review, the inner life
is lousy with affection
for the outer life which seems
like a sweet, dumb child
that has somehow survived
a week alone, lost in intemperate
circumstance, an actual swamp
in the Bayou, and our inner life
wonders, how did that stupid
child I love so tenderly
and with so little outward show
of derision possibly survive out there
where the possibility of being eaten
by a crocodile is very real,
grabbed by snakes, being bitten by endless
mosquitoes, and drowned, let alone
freezing, let alone starved.

III
Survival experts opine
that your idiot outer life
survived in the Bayou
because it never thought
to panic, it never noticed
that it was a time to give up.
Our inner life wonders
how this naïve assumption
of existence is communicated
to the crocodiles and the snakes
but the survival expert is gone:
wanted to be the first one
out of the parking lot, just
in case. I guess I understand.

IV
How did it ever get construed
that the child of us is inner? It’s
the outer that always has to be told
to take that out of your mouth.
I’ve got something twice as inner
that sits quietly writing her book.
Perhaps our outer self ate algae.
Bumble bumble, the deadline
for the grant is long past, long past,
but some part of you writes
for guidelines. I realize that the
deadline is past but I want to
express my desire to have applied.
This is not what the survival
expert had in mind.

V
Staring out the window
towards First Avenue, the inner
self lectures. Vulnerability,
it explains to the outer self,
is a difficult mess. Yes, apply
for the grant but not when the deadline
is so long past. As for asking your lover
to move in, perhaps you remember
your stay in the swamp? The yellow
eyes of those who see when you
are nightly blinded? The leg-less
finesse of the serpents? The tug
of vines? Well, who am I to caution
your affections. By now the outer self
is on the phone, making the arrangements,
not particularly concerned;
eager for all of it. Hoping to win
grants for which it never applied
and sliding down some secret
handrail, open-armed, wide-eyed,
into the din of life. Apparently,
it is crazy in love, and reckless
with the customs of survival.

-Jennifer Michael Hecht