tender mammals

The wonderful poetryisnotaluxury posted a Joy Sullivan poem today ("On Days I Hate My Body, I Remember Redwoods") and I almost just copied them and posted the same one, because it's so fucking good. But here's a different one, instead.

I've heard elephants think we're cute but I doubt it.
Instead, it's humans who are easily charmed. A species
delighted by yellowing leaves and the decency of dogs.
We're tender mammals mostly. Trying to keep each other afloat.
Scooting earthworms off the sidewalk. Scooping our hearts out—
like oysters from the shell. A kink in evolution's engine maybe
how we marvel at meteors. How my mother brings in daffodils
to rescue them from frost. Even I know a sunset doesn't save us
but I still swerve to the side of 405 just to see the sky squish pink
beneath night's dark thumb. Is it defect or advantage—this impulse
to cradle what is soft and small and never truly ours? This instinct
beyond sex or survival—a genetic code that interprets mountains
as something holy. The moon as wonder. That spots a shaky fawn
in the dew-slick dawn and roots for it to live.

—Joy Sullivan, "Instinct," from Instructions for Traveling West (The Dial Press, 2024).