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ENLIGHTENMENT
I am living deeply now
like the field mouse in its pocket
of earth - pulse and breath
warming corridors
moist with rain as a man
warms a woman. I possess
darkness webbed beneath
clutches of weed and grass,
kneel at altars of cold stone.
The burning heads of marigolds
shield me from rain that drums
against my realm like the drums
of Hannibal's might - so sweet
to discover life in shallow
splashes of blood.
HERITAGE
Yesterday, I was the north:
the pungent air hovering
above the muscled
shoulders of a grizzly waltzing
with salmon. I was a urine
streak in the snow, a fallen elk's
broken femur, a drip of blood
slipping down the black
spine of a timber-wolf's whisker.
I was the exposed rib cage, the unborn
fawn, and the buzzard waiting
for its ribbon of meat. Today
I'll nest in shadow: beneath the lung,
beside the fang, behind the eye
that captures the next beast to struggle
against the dimming thud of beat and pulse.
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PROMETHEAN MEDITATION
The vulture building its nest
in my hair peers through me -
as though light has forgotten my face;
but it knows the life I've granted
men is the same it thieves from me.
Let it pierce this flesh. Let its heart
heave against its breast, a babe
against a womb - for every belly
must be filled with yolk and wine;
veins must strain against blood;
muscles must ache with pain -
poetry must be written
to span night's hollow chasm.
READING IN BED
Some nights I lie flat,
my back against the mattress -
as if I recline on a pirate's plank
or the void of a hungry
coffin. The book, opened to me,
its spine facing the ceiling,
reminds me of a roof: an old tool shed,
a tent staked in a meadow's
flowered corner. I think of flowers
because they're tattooed on the comforter
covering me like a thin sheet of earth.
Tonight I'll shake my book
until letters sprinkle from its pages,
poppy seeds from a bagel, invite
the sparrows and catbirds that gossip
about the birdfeeder to feast
on the alphabet strewn across
my idle heft - each chirp a moral,
each twitch a new tale.
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