Oh Nature by Bruce Weigl

Oh Nature

by Bruce Weigl

Today some things worked as they were meant to.

A big spring wind came up and blew down

from the verdant neighborhood trees,


millions of those little spinning things,

with seeds inside, and my heart woke up alive again too,


as if the brain could be erased of its angry hurt;
     

fat chance of that, yet


things sometimes work as they were meant,

like the torturer who finally can’t sleep,


or the god damn moon
     

who sees everything we do


and who still comes up behind clouds
     

spread out like hands to keep the light away.

This poem is fron Bruce Weigl's 2006 book, From Declension in the Village of Chung Luong, published by Ausable Press.

Oh, this title! The moan of an ode, an exasperated sigh, the start of an angry rebuke? Yes, yes, and yes.

But let’s stay at the beginning for a bit. What a way to pull readers in to the poem: things working out as they were meant to work. Wow! Days like that are valuable and wonderful. We are on board with this speaker.

A wind—wind so often signals/symbolizes change—sets maple tree seeds spinning through the neighborhood. A wonderful visual that evokes other senses as well, even for those who don’t live near maples. Everyone has felt a spring wind.

And what change this wind brings to the speaker—his heart is energized and his brain? Well, maybe not completely soothed, but the speaker seems to think that’s a possibility. Or not. There’s definitely a maybe yes/maybe no here.

The sentiment of the first line is repeated, opening up the speaker’s willingness to believe his angry hurt could be erased.

His proof? What a surprise here! If things work as they should, a torturer will loose sleep. Because of the personal anger mentioned in the first stanza, and the fact that a guilty conscience is not the worst thing that can befall someone who literally tortures people, I think this torturer is a hyperbolic title for the speaker, who, we are about to learn, was awake all night.

And here we have more of the speaker’s anger. He even curses! (I am not shocked, but cursing is so rare in poetry it stands out when it is used.) And he curses at the moon, who earns this ire by showing up, as usual, after witnessing “everything we do.”

The wind, the spinners, the moon—oh, nature! But we also see human nature here—anger, hurt, humor (anger at the moon!), the admission that humans do things we’d rather hide in the dark, and the joy in believing that sometimes things work out.

There’s a lot going on here, in all the good ways. Or should I say the poem works out in all the ways it should? 😉