In Their Own Words
Donika Kelly on “Poem to Remind Myself of the Natural Order of Things”
“Poem to Remind Myself of the Natural Order of Things”
Observe the baby hippo,
early born in hay over concrete,
stumbling and new in its enclosure:
Taut skin and fat and awkward steps—
it stumbles under a fluorescent sun
and nearly into the white walls.
Hippo baby, little river horse,
you should be in a river.
O Donika, you should be in love.
From The Natural Order of Things (Graywolf, 2025). Copyright © 2025 by Donika Kelly. Reprinted with the permisison of the poet.
On “Poem to Remind Myself of the Natural Order of Things”
This was the first poem I wrote under this title, “Poem to Remind Myself of the Natural Order of Things”—there are two more, although only two are in The Natural Order of Things. Each poem responds in some way to internet videos that went some degree of viral around 2017. Each poem was a gesture at reorienting. These poems helped me turn away from the relationships that did not serve me and toward the life I wanted to live.
In January of 2017, I knew I was getting a divorce. I’d been estranged from my first wife for nearly six months, and so I had time to move through all the stages of grief. By January, I had settled into and accepted the forthcoming reality. There was just on the horizon, a glint of light or love in winter’s dark. At the same time, Fiona the hippo was born six weeks early at the Cincinnati Zoo. She was an internet phenomenon, and in one of the early videos of her, she is framed in a doorway behind the scenes, moving tentatively into the fluorescently lit room. In those early days, she also needed a lot of care because she was so small that at first, she couldn’t nurse. Like Fiona, I emerged into my life and myself in a space that wasn’t made for me—I was isolated in western New York far from friends and family. I was in the enclosure, nursing my wounds.
In writing this poem, which I lovingly call the hippo baby poem, I was reaching for the natural order of my life, the one I wanted to claim. To be in love, to begin a return, if possible, to the river of my life.
