Harry Harlow in the Pit of Despair
It’s easy enough to be thankful for the robin’s dappled
egg, the crepuscular rays gouging
through the clouds.
Even the caged monkey can blow kisses at its captors.
Why don’t the crow’s feet freeze
to the snowy branch?
Why doesn’t the worm in his hole die of shame? Let us
go on loving each other as if
none of this matters.
All winter the sun lolls low across the horizon. What
drives us out with a broom
each morning to knock
the fangs of ice from the eaves of our lover’s house?
Our vice is born in a folk tale:
a fox by the roadside
feigning a lame foot, a scorpion asleep in a traveler’s
boot, a fish singing
to the fisherman’s wife.
Why should it surprise us that affection can limp past
the gates of cruelty? Should it
astonish that we walk
so slowly when we return to an empty house?
Yes, the lamprey lives and dies
by its lingering kiss.
Harry, after the long months of stumbling darkness,
what will emerge to greet
us with outstretched arms? 
“Harry Harlow in the Pit of Despair” from We Don't Know We Don't Know. Copyright © 2010 by Nick Lantz. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc. on behalf of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org.
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