Fielding

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​

We looked up.

This what we will tell you.

The rest is ours.


You want to know what we saw

but you are already asking

the wrong question,

already assuming

what we did with you

resembles what you do with us —

the naming, the shaming, ,

the long interior monologue

you call understanding.


We do not do that.


We took you in

the way the body takes in air.


Your weight on the ground.

The held quality of your breath.

Something in the way you stood

told us everything

we needed.


We share a field with you 

not our world 

Our world is made of other things —

the sharp of the fence wire,

the soggy grass,


the particular silence

that means nothing is coming,

the particular silence

that means something is.


You were a something.

We assessed you.

We returned to ourselves.


Nagel asked what it is like

to be another creature

and had the honesty to say

he could not know.


Most humans look at us looking

and decide we are reflecting them,

that our gaze is a kind of gift,

proof that even animals

find them interesting.


We find you legible.

That is not the same thing.


You perform so much

for one another —

the careful arrangement of the face,

the voice adjusted for the room,

the self that shifts

depending on who is watching.


We see none of that.

We see the thing underneath,

the animal that has not yet

composed itself,

the body before it remembered

it was being watched.


That is what we looked at.


Not your name.

Not your story.

Not the version of yourself

you have been quietly constructing

since you were old enough


Just the rhythm of you.

Just the fact of you.

Just the heat

you brought to the field.


We looked up 

and meanwhile

the grass

never needed

to be anything

other than grass,

and neither,

for a moment,

did we.

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