Mourning Doves and Magpies Near Park City, Utah, 2 October 2018

But he turned his face to the wilderness
When the rains returned and the colors washed
Out of the branches. He saw the wild birds
On the edge of town, domesticating
Themselves for success at reproduction,
As his own ancestors had done. And now,
Look how things had become, every human
Head stuffed with the weight of the world of words.
Civilization itself was the rough
Beast come round to gobble up everyone.
As it was possible that the termites
And their wonderfully complicated mounds
Were servants of the fungus they tended
And fed from, the secret of their success,
Our bodies and minds, even the feral
Haunting the margins, were made the servants
Of the hovering bolus of culture
That fed us. But he turned his face away
From the obvious to the wilderness.