Seven

In a rare bout of early morning writing,

I find myself looking out of the window

and staring at a squirrel

on the fence at the top of the garden.

His tail is twitching about

as if it has squirrel tail St Vitus’ Dance.

I don’t know if this particular affliction

is an actual thing,

but if it is, then this squirrel has it.

Perhaps, I think, as I distract myself from

finishing my next poem about death,

perhaps this squirrel is genuinely ill

and has the onset of some form of squirrel Parkinson’s.

Maybe it is dying.

Is this what squirrels do before they die?

I do not know.

It’s at this point that Coleridge’s witty little couplet

about swans and death and singing surfaces.

Swans sing before they die; ‘twere now bad thing,

Did certain people die before they sing.

How very artistic of the swans, I muse;

and this starts me wondering

what acts of artistic endeavour

might be undertaken by other creatures

during that brief shadow which hangs over

the last moments of their existence.

Based on my observations,

you might think that squirrels perform interpretive dance

in the moments before they die,

but bees already have that one covered.

Squirrels, I have decided, recite poetry.

Bears paint pictures of stormy skies in oil on canvas

while mice write the first line,

and only the first line,

of a novel which will remain forever unfinished.

Butterflies make deeply ambiguous short foreign-language films

about either the weather,

or anything where the subtext is, rather predictably, chaos.

Wolves sculpt wooden statues

in praise of mystic, magic winds,

and lions spray paint metaphysical aphorisms

on hillsides and giant rocks.

Elephants go on a frenzy of demolition

as a climax to their already-established modality of existence,

but this time it’s random, destructive performance art,

and each live experience is always called

‘The End of an Elephant’s Memory.’

Interrupting my thoughts,

the cat asks to be let in.

‘And what do you cats do in the moments before death,

my little arty monster?’ I say, as I open the door.

She jumps on to the table

and gives me her familiar

inscrutable cat expression,

before sitting on my notebook.

Cats, it occurs to me,

have an advantage over the other animals

when it comes to this sort of thing,

for they get to experience death nine times.

How they must tower above their fellow creatures

in their artistic achievements –

the paintings, song-cycles, poems, plays,

choreographed dances, avant garde novels,

satirical cartoons, ambient film scores,

and absurdist collages,

which they create in the moments before

each of their nine deaths.

Perhaps it is this belated awareness of death,

which animals only feel

for the first time

when they sense the shadow fall over them,

which moves them suddenly to create.

Is it, I wonder, the lifetime of foreknowledge which moves us

to spend our years, and not just our final moments,

in pursuit of our creations,

our counter-expressions of finality,

our catafalque of immortality projects?

I see that the squirrel has now gone,

and, with a flourish of poetry

so beloved of these creatures,

I welcome her into my notebook.