Wild

I feel wild this week. Wild with anger about the many new one-size-fits-all policies at the kids' high school. Wild to spend the few remaining hours of unscheduled time we have before school starts next Tuesday. Wild to get on the road tomorrow to see friends and take Walker to a chess tournament while Eleanor and Ron stay here to host her birthday party, for which I have already provided all the necessary supplies. And wild about this poem, one that I find seasonal about now, from Tony Hoagland's latest volume:

Wild

In late August when the streams dry up
and the high meadows turn parched and blond,

bears are squeezed out of the mountains
down into the valley of condos and housing developments.

All residents are therefore prohibited
from putting their garbage out early.

The penalty for disobedience will be
bears: large black furry fellows

drinking from your sprinkler system,
rolling your trashcans down your lawn,

bashing through the screen door of the back porch to get their
first real taste of a spaghetti dinner,

while the family hides in the garage
and the wife dials 1-800-BEARS on her cell phone,

a number she just made up
in a burst of creative hysteria.

Isn't that the way it goes?
Wildness enters your life and asks

that you invent a way to meet it,
and you run in the opposite direction

as the bears saunter down Main Street
sending station wagons crashing into fire hydrants,

getting the police department to phone
for tranquilizer guns,

the dart going by accident into the
neck of the unpopular police chief,

who is carried into early retirement
in an ambulance crowned with flashing red lights,

as the bears inherit the earth,
full of water and humans and garbage,

which looks to them like paradise.

When you're already feeling wild and get to the point where "wildness enters your life and asks/that you invent a way to meet it," isn't that the point where you feel road rage or checkout line rage or now-you've-made-a-mess rage? Aauurgh!

I like this poem's reminder to take a moment and sit back to admire the world full of "water and humans and garbage." It reminds me of watching the people at the zoo, something I spent some time doing last week when we crossed "go to the zoo" off our to-do list for this summer. The little ones who thought the arctic foxes were "cute" were amusing, and all the different ones who came to stand under the mister to cool off demonstrated a seemingly endless variety.

What's your favorite place for people-watching?