after Francine J. Harris
is there a wetland inside me
an ecosystem all its own
so many species of chlorophyll-filled
flora and doe-like fauna
living symbiotically within
some recess of my body
who is to say I am not Mother Earth
home to lizard and the toad
home to slick-black catfish
that swim and wriggle upon the land
who’s to say my big, brown
body is not the whole world
with its hemispheres, equator
its longitude and latitude
its mighty meridian
who is to say no wild dogs roam in me
who is to say I am not part wolf
or I am not the valleys upon
which the hunched-back buffalo now graze
as its numbers grow