Poetry Vault: Inheritance

By Zach Hively

My social media algorithms have been targeting me lately.

Not in the usual ways, either. There are, in fact, strangely few ads for new Lego products and dog trainers and those jiggly weights for rock-solid abdominals.

No, the algorithm is telling me, through memes full of defense-mechanism humor, that I’m burning out.

Me? Not ME. Other people burn out. I just have to keep going to prove I’m worth anything to the world!

But then I had a lovely short conversation with a dear friend I haven’t seen in way too long even though she’s just up the road. (Hi, you!)

We talked about how we need to put our phones down more often and go sit by the water more often, and enjoy friends. I imagined this included picnic baskets with salami and cheese. Because I’m basically a hobbit.

And that’s what we talked about. Being more hobbitish.
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So here is a poem for everyone else who feels like the human world we’ve created just isn’t quite right all the time. Sometimes that sensation is like an itch under the sock. Sometimes it’s like being stalked by a big cat. Whatever it feels like to you, I suspect that you might hear its whispers, too.

Inheritance
 
You are human,
and as such,
you inherited
a massive collection
of domesticities,
tangled together
like a box of tackle
that’s part of the family
even though no one fishes
anymore, not since before
some war or other.
 
You were born
into a suite
of civil decorations,
predetermined as
wide-ruled paper,
and you never got to choose
at the start
how tame you would be
or where your territory would range.
 
Now the weeds threaten
the property line
and tap
tap tap
on the view
out the window.
They overgrow
your sense
of propriety,
because how
could anything
that flowers
be wicked?
 
You have your moments
when you anticipate
burning it all down,
living off the road,
forwarding all correspondence
to a PO box
you will never check.
 
You didn’t ask for society,
and you don’t know
how to answer
the primal itch
humming up through
your feet.
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PO Box 1119, Abiquiú, NM 87510