Second Nature

In these poems, Eric Paul Shaffer explores second nature, "a practice natural enough to look natural." Practice means acting within every moment and also means refining the most elegant and economical way to act. Practice is both what we do and what we learn to do well. These simultaneous senses reveal our second nature, whether one reads bumper stickers, counts magpies, imagines a brother as a river, grieves a lost mango tree, or squints the eye just enough to see clearly.

Always outside of ourselves, the world looks just so

when we travel far enough. Inked and painted lines

are ours, drawn from us, not the sky,

not the earth, not even the whorls at the tip of a finger.

Look softly, and the world blurs. Edges vanish. I slacken

my sight and exfine the world, erase brinks,

mute borders, and then I see. In a fade of red, I see a world

in flux. In a mist of green, I see what I should never expect.

In a splash of white, I see an eternity

no one wants. I see all the same way snow smooths

the verge of a cliff and deroughs the peaks of mountains.

- from "Exfinition"