My Grandson Wants to Go to Chernobyl

He wants to see what feeds on calamity,
foxes, roe deer, wild boar, bison,

polecats and mink, thriving without us.
Thirty-five years since everyone

scattered, as if by advancing troops that seek
only us. We want to be exceptional, so we are.

Why are we surprised at reversal, ravens
nodding from windows, no one to harvest lettuce

but the fat hares. A fertile derangement, woodlands
spreading, fresh heaps of teeth-carved birch

as beavers rework their streams, a new world
let loose the day everyone fled.

Sure, they’ve found albino barn swallows and voles
with cataracts, but life still outwits the dead,

persistence its own form of beauty.
Why wouldn’t he want to enter that garden?