Dialogue: Mammalia
by Dawn Promislow
[At the greeny-leafed start
of the path that wends ahead
the sign says:]
Cattaraugus Local Escarpment Corporation
“Preservation is our future”
Mammal checklist:
Virginia Opossum (Didelphis virginiana)
Northern Short-tailed Shrew (Blarina brevicauda)
Long-tailed Shrew or Rock Shrew (Sorex dispar)
Smoky Shrew (Sorex fumeus)
[and other shrews]
Star-nosed mole (Condylura cristata)
Hairy-tailed mole (Parascalops breweri)
Big Brown Bat (Eptesicus fuscus)
Eastern Pipistrelle (Pipistrellus subflavus)
[and other bats]
Coyote (Canis latrans)
Gray Fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteurs)
Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes)
Striped Skunk (Mephitis mephitis)
Ermine (Mustela erminea)
Long-tailed Weasel (Mustela frenata)
Mink (Mustela vison)
American Black Bear (Ursus americanus)
White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus)
Woodchuck (Marmota monax)
Gray Squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis)
Fox Squirrel (Sciurus niger)
[and other squirrels]
Beaver (Castor canadensis)
Woodland Jumping Mouse (Napaeozapus insignis)
Meadow Jumping Mouse (Zapus hudsonius)
Southern Red-backed Vole (Clethrionomys gapperi)
Meadow Vole (Microtus pennsylvanicus)
[and other voles, et cetera]
White-footed Mouse (Peromyscus leucopus)
Deer Mouse (Peromyscus maniculatus)
Porcupine (Erethizon dorsatum)
Eastern Cottontail (Sylvilagus floridanus)
[On the long, green-leafed path,
boughs bowing, cicadas and birds
sounding
—it was spring:
we breathed cicada’ed air,
a din,
and walked a-sweat, deep in.
I wished
to see
—startle—
a woodland jumping mouse; a spangled star-nosed
mole, a-scuttle; a red-backed mole, a bare and a
bare-back one; a northern pelted short-nosed shrew;
a woodchuck in shavings; a keen bat, tho’ blind, and
a hoary one; a Ginny, a possum; and an Isabel-ermine, besleeked;
an eastern pipistrelle, bestockinged; and that meadow vole that is now farly
greened; and an eastern cottontail, like Peter, or a high-tailed deer
vanishing—
a warm-blooded thing, mammalian, familial,
warmwild of mine—
but none, not one
saw I
along that greeny-leafed escarpment path.]
That’s not a poem, he said.
And she said: It is.
About the Author:
Dawn Promislow is the author of the short story collection Jewels and Other Stories (TSAR Publications, 2010), which was long-listed for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award 2011, and named one of the 8 best fiction debuts of 2011 by The Globe and Mail (Canada). Her poem “lemon” was short-listed for the 2015 Berfrois Poetry Prize. She lives in Toronto.
