THE DRUM THAT BEATS WITHIN US :: Mike Bond

My poetry reading is still in the beginning experimental stages. Being a novice, I pick poetry books like I pick most others, I'm captured by a cover. Such was the case with Mike Bond's The Drum that Beats Within Us, which called out to the beast and nature lover in me. How could I lose when the insides seemed destined to be full of connections between humans and their surroundings?

Bond believes poetry was born the moment we began to speak. It existed before then in "what whales and wolves sing." Every clan needs stories and lessons from the past, and to make them more memorable, the stories were often told in rhythm and rhyme. Poetry and stories are "how we find meaning in the incomprehensible, beautiful, tragic and sacred mystery of life."

This line sums up how I feel about poetry: "What counts is what we learn emotionally. When something hits us emotionally it stays in our experience..." Poetry feels like the ultimate in emotional connection. I can't tell you what poetry is, what different meters and rhythms mean. I can only tell you what I happen to connect with emotionally, what gets me in my gut. Mike Bond's work does that, and I connected with the themes of the havoc we are wreaking on the earth:

Hungry Magpie

A hungry magpie
is a world
out of order,

when after so much killing
there's nothing left
to die.

The earth barren
as the raw red skin
of Mars,

the seas deadly
as the toxic
skies.

And to think
one little biped
did it all.

Paradise Ducks

Paradise ducks don't know
about men and steel.
In rainforest rivers
they love
and raise their young,
always paired, the
dark multicolored male
and white-necked female.

Paradise ducks so easily fly,
don't know about airplanes
carrying men halfway
round the world,
shotguns in their baggage,
men who shoot thousands of ducks
for fun,
who have shot ducks in Brazil,
Mongolia, Canada, and now
in the far south
of the South Island
of New Zealand.

Paradise ducks mate for life.
Men don't.
A duck never kills.
Men do.
Ducks love misty dawns
that men sleep through,
flashing rivers and skies
blue as the gun barrels
that the men to love
to kill ducks
look down
before they fire.

Most Evil Thing

The most tragic thing
humans do
is war,

our greatest joy
is life's
creation.

The most evil
is to call one
the other.

*  *  *

Mike Bond is an award-winning poet, ecologist, and war and human rights journalist. I loved his no-punches-pulled approach, addressing the our vanishing natural world and calling us to account. This is a book I will buy for my growing poetry shelf and reread with pleasure.