CONSCIOUS, Translation Party Version
. . .there is something that it is like to be a bat.
I find the clean air –this is the starting point.. Here are the types of sound floating insects make. I have one in my mouth. Take it.
Or a chipmunk, rustic warmth of a hole filled with nuts and seeds, the smell of wet leaves and the world. Or a wasp chewing the old railing, carrying the pulp home and spitting it out, building the layers of my smothering and exquisite nest.
Or a wolf, in a whisper, I have heard every turn of the deer. I return to myself and wake up in the scent. Or a porcupine, shuffling in the forest without scruple. Partridge–I am a great whirring, wings open. A salamander trying to comprehend the road.
I want to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat, a weasel itself, a whale, the mind of a swarm of bees. Oh, my little heart has limits!
Can you remember what was it like to be a newborn– a differentiation in the world of its own sort of brain? Do you even know what is it like to be yourself, unconscious of nearly everything?
(When I was working on this poem I ran it through Translation Party and tweaked it. Sometimes I think I like this version best.)