You Asked for Nature

When you still had a voice
you asked, soft and hoarse
for nature on your TV screen
so I tried to flick on life in HD
there in the fading light
of your hospital room.

Best I could find was a country vet
in cold Michigan farmland
his clinic a procession of sick, injured
and pregnant animals, his long-gloved arm
often shoved up the womb
of a heifer or mare.

There was a show about off-grid parents
teaching kids in parkas to ice-fish
or spark flame from sticks in the wild
roughshod heart of Alaska

and one about builders erecting
treehouses, with antler chandeliers
reading nooks and composting toilets
pitched high in hardwood canopies.

These must’ve been poor consolation.
I wanted to bring you

a jungle-full of neon tree frogs
meadow after meadow
of red-winged blackbirds
hawksbill sea turtles in blue-green reefs
swamp rose-mallow, dinnerplate hibiscus
a praying mantis washing her face
on a spear of grass

your bleached room bursting into leaf and blossom
IV machine spiraled with vines.

Instead, I kept the volume low
as you sealed yourself
in dying’s sticky chrysalis
your eyes closed, tear-pearled
and gray-glistened as mollusks.

Wendy Kagan lives among the black bears and red foxes of New York’s Hudson River Valley. Three of her poems have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes and two for Best of the Net, and her work has appeared in ONE ART, Mom Egg Review, The Mackinaw, and elsewhere. Her chapbook Blood Moon Aria debuted in December 2025 from Red Bird Chapbooks. More at wendykagan.com.