COCKROACH TIME
What you said
sent the cockroach
under the refrigerator.
Not your words,
but the tone of them,
cut me to the bone.
He knows instinctively
to duck and cover
at explosions.
Now patiently he waits,
in cockroach time,
for us to be gone.
THE LUCKY ONES
The sun is a harvest moon.
The geese congregate by the front door
like they do when the fox is near.
Hens hide under the shed while the emus boom.
Unlock the gates and fill the water troughs.
Hose down the roof and walls.
Park the vehicles facing toward the road.
The turkey hen can’t fly; put a box in the backseat.
Bags packed; sleeping in our clothes—
because we are the lucky ones.
Gabrielle Nevitt is an internationally recognized scientist in the area of sensory ecology—the perceptual worlds of animals. Her writing has been published in top scientific journals, including Science, Nature, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.