The longer I live, the more I realize that I’ve merely glimpsed
into the layers of the natural world around me.
For this reason
I was drawn to create a visual response to Dan's own
thoughts about this concept in his poem "Layers."
— Suzanne"Layers"
_________________________________________________________________________________
Layers
In the spirit
of E. O. Wilson
A
buried secret that I’ve
stumbled
on below life’s
muzzy
noisiness and
haste,
distracted hours
of
too-often-blustery
day: there’s something
lurking
silent under
every
mundane layer,
waiting
to arrest
the jaded eye . . .
I watch
the
thrasher picking
through
the gravel
near
our shed, wonder
what’s
beneath the
thrasher’s layer? I
probe into its puffed
cream
belly underneath
brown
quills. Find
one
large beetle,
gleaming. But now
I wonder
what’s beneath
the
beetle’s chitin
layer? I’ve poked
beneath
that layer
once
before . . .
to light
upon
the milk pearl
of
a maggot!
I’ve
come
to call life’s
MYSTERY
“a
shuffling of
layers.”
_________________________________________________________________________________
An early version
of “Layers” was published in The
Mississippi Review (University of Southern Mississippi , Hattiesburg
