Sample Poems by Nathanael Tagg

Your Witness Trees

Our phantom threads are bullets.
There we were
at your every Gettysburg.
Liken yours to your country's bloodiest.

You hardly fault Plath
for calling herself Lazarus
and a victim of the Holocaust.
Lo and behold: what's left of your North,
your South, your slavery. Climb us

for a better look. My,
you're out of touch. It cannot
be ancient history if, still, so many
of us stand and your musket-

fire is a nine-step procedure.
You say no continuity between
tourists and soldiers, you and them.
Or is it you now and you then?

Wise up. You needn't have
lost a leg to a cannonball.
Just listen to your witness trees.
Never mind that few of us are literal
trees-none as predictable as too many

witnesses for Christ. Listen: a paroxysm
of wind attacks
our leaves and branches
to say, "History, first of all, isn't history."

---

Your Inner Lincoln

Everybody has an inner Lincoln,
not emancipator of slaves
but president afraid to liberate
his own spirit. He rejected Christian

notions of revelation and paradise,
even flirted with pantheism,
but must have feared losing
the obligatory facade of godliness

that not even transcendentalist poets
were free to lose without penalty.
I flirted with veganism till my country
said, "Leave our future kid out of this,

and buy your own groceries."
We all have gnawing worries.
Accepting trees as creatures,
would we hug them till our eyes

and genitals are sprayed by loggers'
chemicals? To be disciples of green
Jesus, must we leave our families?
Unlikely. And I'd rather not resemble

Mr. Martin in "The Catbird Seat,"
willing to kill so normalcy can resume
in the office of my life. It's not
that I want to be my friend, consumed

by waiting for the rapture and then
the climate change apocalypse,
living without electricity and toilets,
his every word, however soft-spoken,

prodding you with judgement.
His hairline recedes, his wrinkles
multiply, at twice the speed of normal.
That happens to a sitting president.

---

Haldane's Last Words

I'm called "the man who knows it all,"
but do I know myself? I ought
to have as little reverence
for myself as I've had for,
say, the God of theologians,
those who asked me what could be
deduced about the creator

from creation. "An inordinate fondness
for beetles" was my answer,
given nearly half a million species
of them exist. Forget my cleverness;
I won't recite my verse on rectal cancer,
which is killing me. Da Vinci-esque,

I'll make a list. 1. To learn, I drank
hydrochloric acid, was locked in rooms
with toxic air and stuck in chambers,
decompressed, then suffered
migraines and perforated eardrums

and shattered vertebrae. 2.
But I gave little thought to animal cruelty
in experiments and agriculture-
not a moment of non-speciesist
consideration to a pig that has a higher
IQ than some unfortunate kids. 3.

I wrote Darwinian books and papers.
Hundreds. 4. And yet I penned
a measly paragraph or two
on the kinship of animals and humans-
less on kinship's connection to altruism.
5. I was deemed "the cleverest man"
who'd make a mathematical system,

then write a Shakespearian sonnet-
left and right faithfully married in my brain.
6. However, I coaxed a girl to leave
her spouse and marry me.
I almost lost my post at Cambridge
thanks to the scandal. 7. I initiated

modern scientific talk on altruism. 8.
And still, at times, I enjoyed the war-
enjoyed its tanks and bullets,
gas and trenches-so much so
my commander called me "the bravest,

dirtiest" soldier. 9. Pursuing justice,
empathizing with the destitute,
I was a socialist, who had the wit
to say that Britain and the US
adopting communism is as likely as hippos
doing somersaults and jumping hedges.

10. But then I deemed a mass-
murderer, Stalin, a "very great man
who did a very good job." 11.
In the end, I met myself on my deathbed.
12. My abdomen relaxed, and after weeks
of weight loss and fatigue came
a jolt of strength. 13. Though waste

refused to leave my body, a list
had purged my soul of something worse.

---

Our Baby Deepness

Really? Yes, science proves the virgin birth
of Komodo dragons, caused by the holy spirit
of loneliness. Often, a most mammal-like lizard

-call her Mary; look in her eyes (somebody
is home)-must have swum to paradise,
an island with everything she needs, bar

a mate. Evolution-call him Evo-
couldn't brook this (no nativity) forever
and said, "No mate? No problem. Voil`a: you are

pregnant." To awe me, Jane, yours needn't be
a virgin birth and won't be, which your mom and I
can confirm. To the miraculous process, I'm

peripheral. Never mind biblical walking on water.
Oceanographer Sylvia Earle walked the ocean floor,
wore a pressurized suit, was reborn as Our Lady

Deepness, who says, "Kids don't start out killing;
they start out wondering." Jane, you'll
be curious (in both senses) like Jane Goodall

and become yourself by living among us-
among animals. Like you, like fetuses, in wetness
Earle lives, learns, grows. Mirroring the odyssey

of your mom, every woman with child, all expectant
parents (me too!), Earle, while pregnant,
descended in a submersible to explore the depths.