issue 34 > poetry > ridland
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My Past Lives
by John Ridland
Why I swim In my last past life I was a Shetland Selkie,
always amorous, always in love,
swimming spirals around my Intended
before we coupled. I drowned in desire.
How I talked In my life before that––a crow, I’m afraid,
squawking and cawing my strangled overtures.
Nobody liked me: I squawked all the more.
I was shot, neck wrung, and hung by my claws from barbed wire.
Why I write Before that, though, I was the sweetest songbird,
vain of my soft twitters. I was trapped
by a snare of human hairs, pecking up birdseed,
and stripped of my multicolored tail-feathers.
I only walk One of these lives I’ll learn to run well,
when I’ve grown wirier, lower to the ground,
and not afraid of falling. A river could teach me how,
or a jaguar, or a jaguar’s prey.
Old acquaintance That Spotted Towhee in his rufous waistcoat
and black hood, showy , sprucing up in the birdbath––
now, where did I know him? I can’t quite—ah!
I know! Headwaiter at the Ritz Carlton Hotel.
A Tip He wasn’t me, nor I him, because here I am
and there he is. I can nod Hello again,
and press a folded bill into his bill, winking,
“When you have a good table, there’ll be another like that.”
And who are you? So close we are in our lives, criss-crossing over
each other, speaking loads of languages
with the same tongue. Why wouldn’t you want to know
every living creature on earth? You might become any of them.