After Watching Ice Age Three
Stephen Burt
To live as others do should have been easier,
as easy as falling off the overhang
of a slippery cliff, with help from a log.
My tusks had been holding you up. I am sorry for it.
The most dangerous place in the world
is the world, or becomes the world
after you have to flee into it. Even the cap
of an acorn, or the wind-distributed promise
of a future accord, will do, since all families are
adoptive, or they are failed families, or they are both,
as wind chimes need the wind
to tell what they falsely believe to be “their own story”;
the echoes in that cavern must also do justice
to the last chipmunks on earth. They fell in love,
delighting the birthday party, who saw it all
last year (age median: eight and a half). We hold
their hypothetical findings at a distance
until we realize we are in there too,
in the freezing not-quite-
forever of an artificial-
butter-and-paste-scented theater, where everything rings
and nothing gets picked up, and you have to hunt
your own critters if you want critters, to get out
and then sneak back in with some help from that freaky invention
your sister called “fire.” And that’s why we never came home.