Endangered Species

Jennifer asked me to read a poem to her last night and handed me Bob Hicok’s “Words for Empty Words for Full” and pointed to the poem “Endangered Species” where Hicok imagines walking down train tracks, I’m guessing in Oklahoma, considering that there are languages and cultures about to disappear and I see thought patterns, linguistic tics, and syntax structures similar to the way I try and make sense of this world. It’s unnerving and reassuring at the same time to know there’s someone else out there who maybe was taught and told that men are to be a certain way, scientists or engineers, that the accumulation of knowledge has meaning, and maybe we could even fake these languages, fake that we understood but what’s reassuring is to know there’s someone else out there who fully understands the smallness and failings of a language that cannot expressly share the wonder and beauty I see in the moon early on a Tuesday morning.