Talking a porcupine down

I am walking back toward the house

Returning from the short walk I take every morning

Right after I get up, even before coffee.

It is something I have been doing for myself,

Mostly for my back, for over a year.

On this walk I am usually half asleep,

Waking up. In symbiotic fashion

So is the world waking up.

Rain or shine, misty or dry,

There is a freshness to the air

That works on me to gradually rouse my senses

And ease me out of dreamtime.

As I walk I see a creature

Making its way toward me on the road.

I think it is our fluffy gray cat, Tulsi

Who is coming to meet me.

This is the only thing I can think of

Even though that would be totally out of character for her,

She being a home body . . Still,

Who else could it be! Then I see,

It is a porcupine. Tulsi's "fur"

Becomes a coat of quills.

It / she is exactly the size of Tulsi

And just as self-absorbed.

She doesn't seem to be aware of me,

So I stop. Then she catches my scent.

She stops, gets one look at me and

Heads off the dirt road straight for a tree

Which she starts climbing

Without speeding up or slowing down.

Up she goes. As she climbs,

Sort of walking straight up the trunk

I begin talking to her, using my sweet voice.

"I would never hurt you.

I like you.

You don't need to be afraid of me.

We're friends." That sort of thing.

She stops climbing about 12 feet up and stops.

She is listening to me.

Then she backs down the trunk,

Neither fast nor slow.

Once on the ground she turns

And continues into the deep woods.

This has happened before,

This sort of thing, when talking to a wild animal

Changes the conditioned dynamic

Between human and wild-creature.

I can't be the only one, the only male,

Who has noticed this.

I am not a hunter. I am a vegetarian.

I do not look at animals and see food.

I see another conscious being

And I usually see distrust and fear.

The Catch 22, for those of us who are not predators,

Is that, if some of us

Try and befriend animals

Or at least communicate. . . love?. . .

Does that make them more vulnerable

To other humans who are not interested in befriending them?

In the old (old) days there was a sacred agreement

Between nature and people,

That, if people were respectful

And honored the sacredness of life,

Including their own, and only hunted or harvested

What was needed for survival

And perhaps a little more, nature would

Make the sacrifice, and this understanding

Became the basis of an ecology

That was not human-centered,

But life-centered.

That agreement has been trashed

By generation after generation

I am sorry to say.

And I say this with a twinge of bitterness.

There are too many of us

To all agree on anything!!

We have forgotten how to live in balance.

But when I sweet-talked my little friend the porcupine,

And she decided that she could trust me,

I experienced a good feeling

That lasted all day.

And that good feeling stood up

To a lot of shitty news from Ukraine and Gaza!

My thought was, it's personal.

Maybe that's the takeaway -

That the relationship between humans and nature

Can be healed one encounter,

One overture

at a time.

We all have it in us

To heal our own relationship with nature.