What Animals can Teach us about Being Human

If I had what animals have, I would rise on my hind legs, 
skate on the water’s surface like a basilisk, send an arc 
of spray as if angling my skis around a lake 
like my mother, who never got her hair wet, 
who let go of the orange handle and glided 
with quiet dignity into the shallow beach. 

If I had what animals have, my retina would bloom 
with more cones than the human eye is meant to hold, 
and I would see not just the hues my species
relies on—wine-red berries, yellow pears, 
blue plums—but colors shimmering 
at a frequency having only to do 
with pleasure. 

I would know when to fight, when to activate flight. 
I would regenerate lost limbs, reallocate 
my energy in a more strategic way, sleep 
one radiant hemisphere of my brain  
at a time. 

If I had what animals have, my bones would hollow out. 
I would fly and when I’d had enough, I would curl 
into myself like a jellyfish bobbing on death’s 
maternal wave. I would retract my tentacles 
and revert to some long-past, natal state, 
sink to the ocean floor where I began. 

I would wait there and savor the soft dark. 
I would give thanks to those who made me—
the lizard clawing out a trench and squeezing eggs 
from her cloaca, the starfish shooting a cloud 
of cells into the water, the mother who infused me
in her womb—I would thank them all, 
and then restart my life.

LYNN McGEE

Lynn McGee’s poetry collections are SCIENCE SAYS YES (Broadstone Books, forthcoming); Tracks (Broadstone Books, 2019), Sober Cooking (Spuyten Duyvil, 2016), and two prize-winning chapbooks, Heirloom Bulldog (Bright Hill Press) and Bonanza (Slapering Hol Press). Lynn McGee and José Pelauz co-wrote the children’s book Starting Over in Sunset Park (Tilbury House, 2021). www.lynnmcgee.com