This morning I woke up from a dream about wild animals reveling in the backyard, so I grabbed the book by my bedside: Sidestep Catapult by Anne-Adele Wight. I found those same creatures described by my own unconscious lurking in his poems. Some animals are hungry; some simply curious; others are downright vicious. Wight encompasses the moods of these animals in all their complexity.
Wight’s poetry brings our primitive nature to consciousness. As I read, an insistent memory of my primal side bubbles to the surface, illuminating everything. Neuropsychology has mapped this part of our brain. It is sometimes known as the reptilian brain and part of it is located at the base of the skull. It lives within us and informs our behaviors, although many are eager to deny it.
A master mystic, DC Vision, once told me, “People think the natural world is beautiful. It’s not always that glorious. When you look closer, you see that nature is wild. It devours itself.” He spent several years traveling across the United States on horseback, so he should know.
I have my own feelings about the reptilian brain. Avoiding interactions with the natural world and denying that we are part animal pushes our primal instincts deeper into the unconscious. Repression makes this part of human nature, which is linked to survival, more dangerous, or something to fear. Wight chooses to confront our inherent animal instincts instead. In What Led to the Hawk’s Nest, his wild creatures appear spontaneously in the civilized landscape. “The Florida panther walks towards you from the garage.” Later, “teeth close on your wrist.” This theme is reiterated in Leopard Flower, “did you order animals for the toolshed? / They’ll open it.”
To our civilized minds, wild animals are unpredictable and cruel. However, there is a clear memory of the human world as part of this:
It’s been eons since we lived in the sea
still speechless
in heavy forest language
our throats lack bone and rope.
Wight points out the separation between humans and animals: communication through language is what generates a rupture between the species. However, even with all their ability, humans lack the apparatus to speak with animals.
Wight’s subjects are imbued with light and ignited by crystalline energies. Her book contains the irrepressible: the elemental forces of nature and the mysteries that surround them. Earth, air, water, fire and spirit merge into many of her pieces. Crystalline communication, plant energies, water expressions, and gusts of air emanate energy and light through movement or even stillness. Although these elementals travel on a slightly different frequency than humans and animals, they are no less powerful. When activated, elementals give signs of supernatural importance. Transatlantic Night Flight is a good example of this:
From inside the Ptolemy glass
grid lines divide the Atlantic
traffic control buzz.
Emeralds fall around me
calliope sounding
brings them down in a windfall
wailing carousel tunes.
Is this the music of the spheres?
I love the way Wight poses the final question, set aside in this stanza. She is adept at perceiving through multiple senses. Wight is also in tune with the experiences of the astral body.
Christmas Shopping takes this holistic and sensual awareness even further:
each letter an element
each element its opposite
each facing a color
every color on fire
Solstice Eve recounts a magical ritual where those gathered merge with the natural world and initiate a stream of energy that quickly sets into motion.
four people five trees
how strong is the number
working here and now.
Something pulls towards the skin of the tree
from the center of a ring of five
musical fights on high branches
In magical rituals, the intention guides the results. The act of gathering creates a centrifugal force held by those in the circle and perceived and expressed through feelings, images and sounds in nature.
Wight’s work is the product of a mind with acute sensibilities. For those who see themselves as part of the natural world, not just a banal observer, Sidestep Catapult will provide a jolt of recognition and a renewed sense of oneness with our wild animal core.