I woke up this morning from a dream of wild animals partying in the backyard, so I reached for the book next to my bed: Sidestep Catapult, by Anne-Adele Wight. I found those same creatures described by my own unconscious lurking in his poems. Some animals are hungry; some just curious; others are downright vicious. Wight embraces the moods of these animals in all their complexity.

Wight’s poetry brings to mind our primitive nature. As I read, an insistent memory of my primary side breaks to the surface, illuminating everything. Neuropsychology has mapped this part of our brain. It is sometimes referred to as the reptilian brain, and part of it is located at the base of the skull. It lives within us and informs our behaviors, although many are eager to deny it.

A mystical teacher, DC Vision, once told me, “People think the natural world is beautiful. It is not always so glorious. When you look closer, you see that nature is wild. It devours itself.” He spent several years traveling the United States on horseback, so you should know.

I have my own hunch about the reptilian brain. Avoiding interactions with the natural world and denying that we are part animal pushes our primal instincts towards the unconscious. Repression makes this part of human nature, which is linked to survival, more dangerous, or something to fear. Instead, Wight chooses to confront our inherent animal instincts. In What Led to the Hawk’s Nest, his wild creatures appear spontaneously in the civilized landscape. “Florida Panther walks toward you out of the garage.” Later, “the teeth are closed at the wrist.” This theme is reiterated in Leopard Flower, “Did you order animals for the tool shed? / Will they open it.”

To our civilized minds, wild animals are unpredictable and cruel. However, there is a distinctive memory of the human world as part of this:

Eons have passed since we lived in the sea
still speechless
in heavy forest language
our throats lack bones and ropes.

Wight points out the separation between humans and animals: communication through language is what creates a gap between species. However, even with all their skill, humans lack the apparatus to talk to animals.

Wight’s subjects are infused with light and fired by crystalline energies. His book houses the irrepressible: the elemental forces of nature and the mysteries that surround them. Earth, air, water, fire and spirit merge in many of its pieces. Crystalline communication, plant energies, expressions of water and bursts of air emanate energy and light through movement or even in stillness. Although these elementals travel on a slightly different frequency than humans and animals, they are no less powerful. When activated, elementals herald signs of supernatural importance. The transatlantic night flight is a good example of this:

From inside the Ptolemy crystal
grids divide the Atlantic
humming traffic control.
Emeralds fall around me
calliope that sounds
knocks them down on a windfall
hooting carousel tunes.

Is this the music of the spheres?

I love the way Wight poses the final question, aside from this stanza. She is an expert in perceiving through multiple senses. Wight is also in tune with the experiences of the astral body.

Holiday shopping takes this holistic and sensual awareness even further:

each letter an element
each element is its opposite
each opposite a color
all colors on fire

Solstice Eve recounts a magical ritual in which the assembled merge with the natural world and initiate a stream of energy that quickly sets into motion.

Four people five trees
how strength is the number
working here and now.

Something pulls towards the skin of the tree
from the nucleus of a ring of five
the music fights in the upper branches

In magical rituals, intention guides results. The act of gathering creates a centrifugal force sustained by those in the circle and perceived and expressed through feelings, images, and sounds in nature.

Wight’s work is the product of a mind with acute sensibilities. For those who see themselves as part of the natural world, not just a banal observer, Sidestep Catapult will provide a jolt of recognition and a renewed sense of oneness with our wild animal core.