A friend of mine went rafting down the Salmon River
That flows through many moods the placid and the raging
With some middle-aged stout fellows
A friend and some friends of a friend
Confident of their integrity physical and ethical
Joshing and trading a modicum of bullshit
Vacation relief and healthful excursion
Who waxed philosophical
Asserting that a life was meaningful or valuable
To the extent that one made a contribution
Self-mythology of self-made men
But what thing ever made itself
An obvious fallacy considering
That we humans like all phenomenal things
Are products of presbyopic circumstance
And that the lives would be meaningless
Of those denied by circumstance
Those made by circumstances not their own which is all of us
The opportunity to carry out such an action
That the fellows might deem a contribution
A meaningful life an unearned privilege of the few
When manifestly most regard life as worth living
For even those who suffer which is all of us
Though some suffer with shocking exorbitancy
Regard life as worth living
Though we not oft consider
What factors might endow life with this worthiness
And what would earning a privilege mean
While the many suffer who merit our warmest love
As indeed all suffer included the privileged
Who nevertheless possess the wherewithal
To assuage to some degree their own suffering
As indeed that of others if they would
And which pray are those contributions
That might cross the threshold into the valuable
And who contributes what to whom
And what do you think value is anyway
While my friend tuned them out
Or responded with disingenuous nods
Or perhaps demurred courteously
While absorbed instead with the insects
Almost absorbed by them
Gnats caddis-flies or midges swarming above the stream
Sometime annoyance to the eyes nostrils and skin
But a thought forestalled his annoyance
At the fellows and the flies
The thought that flies feed fish and fish feed bears
Staring at miracle and getting flies in his eyes
And the shaggy majestic beasts
Owe their majesty to flies
In the flux of collection and dissipation
And bears shit in the woods or on the river bank
And certain flies love the shit
Of beasts majestic or pathetic they don’t care
Site of nourishment and nursery
While here in the soft hills of my home
Where rivers do not rage
But speak soothingly of cleansing pebbles
Smooth to the touch but not lacking in texture
Of cheering effervescence catfish and warm springs
And lakes and ponds perform their placid ministry
For worms for minnows for the larvae of innumerable species
Sought by birds that majestic strut the shallows with backward knee
I slap iteratively aiming to terminate with extreme prejudice
The canny mosquito
Wise to direct her dark body in sunshine and shadow
With graceful but erratic motion
To escape detection and prevent reprisal
Such as I intend
That she might feed upon the sanguineous humor
Absorb into her body something of my mixed substance
Proteiny compound of rich red milk
And nourish her gravidity
Neither predator nor parasite
But browser on the meadow of my skin
And when on the fifth attempt I score a victory
The meadow blooms with scarlet
And even before the crushing blow
See the swollen abdomen emblem of pregnancy
Glowing translucently with my blood
Mingled perhaps with that of other mammals
Of family or friends
Womb that should swell pampered
But now lies thrown asunder
Thwarted bequest from wingèd mother
To nourish her soon-swimming progeny
Sign of amphibious life lived interestingly
Vulnerably like all life
For the larvae hatch in the still water
Of pond or discarded tire
And wriggle tumblingly up to the air to breathe
And one day rise Venuslike to fly in middle height
If not devoured by birds or bats
Or crushed by iterative slap
Or poisoned by chemical agents
Supplied with chemical agents of their own to preempt
The clotting action that they may strive and sup and succeed
And like their mother nourish new offspring
So that I scratch and draw more blood
And continue to attack with merciless hatred
Any stragglers in the serial horde
For I know from experience of the annoying itching welts
And from science of the pathogens
Virus and plasmodium true parasite
Who would join the other animalcules
Bacteria of the gut and mites that dwell in eyebrows
That crowd in upon the space of my permeable body
Its stout integrity a self-serving figment
And yet I pray one day to make peace
To understand and patiently to forgive
For no being has made itself
Not mosquito nor confident stout fellow
Who thus cannot be held responsible
For the product of their not-making
For surely the attentive self-maker
Or the omnipotent creator for that matter
Or poor old circumstance of the aged eyes
Might have made the self better than it is
Might have made a world otherwise
Than that in which the suffering of one
Feeds the thriving of another
And in any case the creator
Is responsible for the creation
In a way that the not-creator cannot be
As men and mosquitos cannot be
Who thence play regularly their parts in the ceaseless flux
And thus I disclaim full responsibility
For these seemingly endless garrulous pages
Though the many errors are surely my own
Whatever my own means
But any being that can understand and respond to reasons
A category that includes human persons
And we must regard all humans as persons
Is accountable for their actions
Must be prepared to give an account
Of the reasons if any that have given rise to their motives
The modality of responsibility differing
Perhaps subtly from that of account
The ability to fulfill obligation a contingent potential
As circumstances not of our making
Permit our understanding and response
But since actions worthy of the name are motivated
And since many actions affect others
Albeit sometimes in unintended ways
We should take responsibility
Should
But we must be prepared to give an account
Must
We are necessarily accountable
Responsibility a should
Accountability a must
And it often happens that when we give unwilling account
Or when we imagine that we might withhold account
We give in fact the account of no account
That is we have no reasons to report
And henceforth must live with the fact
That we have acted without reasons
And life in its variegated involution involves pleasure
And also the endurance of pain
And worse the infliction of it
But we always have reasons to enjoy pleasure
And reasons to regret pain to prevent pain
Or assuage pain when it happens
And all make their contribution though mostly unawares
The sprezzatura merely of being there
In a situation that obtains
And an event that happens
In the phenomenal part of the world
And thus beasts and flies and fish and fowl
And amiable yahoos joshing upon a raft
Possess majesty in various forms
And they were right the jolly fellows
Though they did not go far enough
Down the river of their discourse
That all make their varying and valuable contributions
Without even trying though a little effort might go a long way
All participate in majesty
The selfsame majesty of moon and sun
And the collections vast or diminutive
Of river and mountain and ocean
And tree and mosquito and spherey turd