Centipede
If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.
—E. O. Wilson
I met its acquaintance lifting boxes, thick
with dust, that hadn’t been moved for years,
for the purposes of readying the books
for a donation and a sale.
Its size puzzled me: the exaggerated length
of it, its many legs looking more like hair
than the paired pins that support it, segment
to segment; waddling more as does
a skunk would than any insect I had seen
ever does. However, I respected
its dimension and what I assessed as
apparently its age, and from that first time
it regarded me, knowing that I was not
one of its persecutors. Although I occasioned
to see its activities, bolting from one dark
corner of the bookstore to another,
toward the end of the day, perhaps, after
a reception, which might have included
cheese and crackers, or bruschetta
and red and white wine, convinced I
would never witness its covert movements
in broad daylight. Such as that is,
one late mid-winter morning, while
at my desk in the office next to the café,
I turned my head to the right, as if
on cue, and saw through the open door
that it was streaking, most of the length
of its body, hurled upward
and forward, as if it were, perhaps,
screaming, as it lunged underneath
the table of baked goods, and into
the metal baseboard heat cover.
It had chosen a time when the rush
between classes had dissipated,
when I couldn’t help but consider its
enormity and the leftover pastries—
the cinnamon buns,
fruit Danish, oatmeal
cookies, and varieties of Biscotti—
that I would admonish
the student staff to cover
with Saran or to replace the tops
of the clear glass jars,
to deduce that the size
of the centipede may have been
in direct proportion
to its gluttony for glazed
icing, pearl sugar, and marzipan.
Offering Guidance
for Karen Olander
The thought does occur to me that whatever
discipline or life you choose, or that you find
intrinsic to who you are, there is challenge, and
then not only just challenge but sheer obstacles
block the path, through which you must
circumnavigate, or blast right through. No artist
or writer, nor human being ever born into this
world, ever had a clear path to the mountaintop.
There have always been jungles to traverse,
forks in the path that must be discerned
as to which to choose, the roar of tigers around
each bend of the circuitous summit trail,
marauding brown bears prowling near the froth
of the falls, and then the rime-slick cairns near
the very peak itself. Aesthetic ascension is no
different from athletic achievement,
the metaphors being apt for one another.
Where lies the actual nascence of the spiritual realm
therein, since in the very ascent up this
precipitous mountain we always risk everything,
since there is nothing gained if we don’t.
The perils of moving forward are far less than
not embarking on the trek at all. Through this
ardor, we slough off the skins of naiveté and
innocence, and molt into the spiritual beings we
really are, possibly creating a work of art worth
the attention and respect in offering guidance
apt for all others who come along this way.
The Swist
The Swist is a brook. As child, the name
was often intentionally
mispronounced by classmates who would
also insert the word cheese after rending
the air with hyperbole. As a grown man,
particularly women, on a date, would
rhyme Swist with Twist, and then say, Just
like Chubby Checker, right? Often enough,
I have needed to have to speak each
letter of it over the phone to a Customer
Service Representative, enunciating
the letters twice; only to hear, Yes, Swift,
repeated back to me, the consternation
rising in my pulse and shooting right
through the top of my head; my ire
surfacing through my repetition, once
again, of the four consonants protecting
that one vowel in the middle, with
the sinuousness of the soft consonants
providing a rush until the final hard sound,
as in following a straightaway before
a sudden meander. The Swist rises in
Rhineland-Palatinate at 330 meters
above sea level on the Eifel. The brook
is nearly 44 kilometers long, and in
North Rhine-Westphalia it joins the mouth
of the Erft. The Swist flows through
my veins, as readily as it tumbles into
Swisttal, a municipality; and its rush
may be heard in Meckenheim and
Flerzheim, which is considered to be
a berg of the town Rheinbach. It is here
that there are cycle paths along
the edge of the brook, where lovers lie
in the grass and children play among
wildflowers. The Swist also gives
its name to the town of Weilerswist.
The source of my namesake is
found at the northern edge of the Eifel.
Considered to be the longest brook
run in Europe, the Swist may explain
why I find healing in moving water.
Wally Swist’s books include Huang Po and the Dimensions of Love (Southern Illinois University Press, 2012); The Daodejing: A New Interpretation, with David Breeden and Steven Schroeder (Lamar University Literary Press, 2015); and Invocation (Lamar University Literary Press, 2015). His poems have appeared in many publications, including Commonweal, North American Review, Sunken Garden Poetry, 1992-2011 (Wesleyan University Press, 2012), and upstreet. Garrison Keillor recently read a poem of Swist’s on the national radio program The Writer’s Almanac.