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C.N.P Poetry 

  • Writer's pictureCathexis Northwest Press

Not Mine To Be; Danaus sentiensus

By: Russell Willis


Not Mine To Be


tempted to trespass on another’s soul

to take their time as mine

to take their “mine” to be a “me”

that ought not be mine to be






Danaus sentiensus


Idea lights upon brain

Resting but a moment, then off

Sweeping up and around the stem

Buffeted by currents of distraction

Drawn by the nectar of Mind

Pollinating grey matter with bits of moments

Scattering thought, insight, perception, sense 

To the breezes of cognition

Then gone to gather other bits

Maybe to explore another Mind

Its essence to be gathered by another

As the honey of sentience




 

After a professional career that began in engineering and moved to higher education and later online education and ministry, Russell Willis is an emerging poet. With a Ph.D. from Emory University in social ethics, much of his teaching and writing is focused on the role of technology in contemporary society and culture. His poetry has been published in Vermont's Best Emerging Poets 2019, Meat for Tea, The MOON magazine, Snapdragon: A Journal of Art & Healing, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, Steady Hands: Ode to Our Fathers, Gratitudes: To Our Mothers, The Esthetic Apostle, and The Write Launch.

“'Not Mine To Be' was born out of frustration I was having with some counseling clients who were struggling with a complex mix of power and identity issues.  When I decided to try to put some of my thoughts on paper, not necessarily to write a poem, but mostly to clear my thinking, I started to write and let my mind wander through this minefield.  I was left with several disjunct phrases on the page.  

As I read them I switched from analysis to creativity and started the poem. One of the lines of thought had several words related to the unlawful or immoral uses of someone else’s property or life.  One of the words was “trespass.” From somewhere came the phrase “trespass on another’s heart.”  Another expression I noticed was, “take the other person’s identity.”  I also realized I had put “me” and “mine” into quotation marks several times. The poem you are reading here emerged from thoughts, hopefully retaining the pointedness, confusion, and frustration that was spawned in my mind, and in the lives of those I was trying to help. 

'Danaus sentiensus' is one of those stories you only get when you write.  I had been concentrating on the nature of consciousness, sentience, for several days when I found myself in the yard with my writing journal.  Entranced by a butterfly, I realized that while I enjoyed its seemingly random flight pattern around the flower pots, I was witnessing the pollination of these flowering plants.  I opened my journal and glanced back at the plant and had a momentary vision of a brain.  Each time the butterfly lit on a flower, I imagined a synapsis firing and then watched as a pattern of synapsis-firings appeared in my imagination.

Soon I had a poem without a title.  I wanted to use the consciousness-as-butterfly metaphor and after some brief Googling, learned that the butterfly I saw was of the genus Danaus.  I thus lit upon the concocted scientific name Danaus sentiensus—a title was born!"


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