On Aesthetic Injury

“It does not follow that acorns are oak trees,
or that we had better say they are.”
—Judith Jarvis Thomson

Every wildlife adventurer understands the lure
of spotting a rare creature in its natural habitat.
Like when you’re in an airboat, skimming over

the swamp & you yearn to feed marshmallows
to gators, watch their jaws open & snap as they swim
right up to the boat, glimpse their armored bodies

sunning on logs among blooming swamp irises.
Or when you’re hang gliding over the Grand Canyon,
suspended by nothing more than a thin, flexible wing,

you count on looking down on bighorn sheep & bison
roaming as you circle overhead. Or in an open-air 4×4,
driving through the heart of a game reserve, you reckon

you’ll be among lions, elephants, rhinos, leopards.
Or when you snorkel out in the night, it is expressly
to swim with giant wild manta rays, to come within inches

of their grand wingspan. But if it just isn’t in the cards,
for you to behold any of them, despite all of your concrete
hopes & calculations? What a bitter pill that would be.