Ouroboros

Gretchen Rockwell, Issue 05

The first time I saw the sharp silhouettes

I couldn’t fumble fast enough to capture

a photograph: Indian flying foxes, bats remembered 

from a Weird n’ Wild Creatures card collected

at ten, when I thought I wanted to be a biologist 

before I realized I'd have to do science. Then I traded

that flying fox card for a Cerberus one, caring more 

about the spiderweb of wonder between literary 

and literal. These days I prefer nature in its un-

nerving wonders. Who needs Athena splitting Zeus' skull 

when mind-controlling jewel wasps exist, spiking into 

lesser insects and hijacking them as a host for their spawn

which eat the corpse inside out and emerge fully formed? 

I still have a favorite fantastical creature: the phoenix, whose nature

is self-immolation. In reality, the mechanism is rarely so static as fire, 

instead often a living instrument, nature curling in on itself 

in an endless wheel. The shadow of death takes the shape of wings

or fangs or the leafy fronds of a fern, unfurling. The lesson is: 

nature will kill you eventually, from the inside out 

or as another of its incarnations. Still, I prefer its marvels 

over myth—how certain seeds can only bloom after being 

burned, flowers exhaling open after forest fires, ash  

still hanging thick in the air while something 

new pokes through: life wriggling out through the cracks.