Unnatural by Stephen Dunn

I’m sure Nature has disapproved of mefor years, as if it had overheardone of my silent screeds against it,and my insistence that only the artificialhas a real shot at becoming morethan we started with, designed,revised, something completely itself.If it could speak, Nature might sayit contains lilies, the strange beautyof swamps, the architectural artof spiders, the many et ceterasthat make the world the world.Nothing man-made can compete, Nature might say. Oh Naturehas been known to go on and on.And if it wanted to push things further,it could cite our sleek perfectionof bombs and instruments of torture,our nature so human we hidebehind words that disguise and justify.But that’s as generous as I want to bein giving Nature its say. I’ve seen itrandomly play its violence card—natural, no-motive crimeswith hail and rain and vicious winds,taking out, say, trailer courts andplaying fields and homes for the elderly.So I want to be heard and overheard,this time for real, out loud, in factright in Nature’s face, to say I preferthe artifice in what’s called artificial,the often concealed skill involved,without which we’d have no accurateview of ourselves, or of lilies in a pond.