19

Aching legs and the perpetually sandy pen
Three dogs wrestle in the tepee, stop to pee
over a gutter on a bridge
Dissipating mist and hollow hands
Ramshackle fence and noble shepherds
A full moon the size of an eye
Not watching, just looking
at the fireflies
twirling in the bosoms of the twins of the lune
dancing, wild eyed,
with their nimble hands

Stirring with the first sounds of morning
I shiver into existence, away from
dreams of mirthless doors and telephones
Heartless women throwing coffee at me
and fingers of whiskey

The red fruit, smaller than its thorn
The sun startles the hilltop wood,
brilliance, they stir at the break of day

The birds let loose their morning song
as Ina, the black and white bitch
 and mother of four
carries away a bag of walnuts

The last howlers from the night before
pay their homage to this flaming sun
The Donkey’s wails tear into the day.

Warmed by the waxing dawn
I eye the green autumn grasses,
the sloping gorge
carved from the sabers of the tributary
leading to the frothing river
making its seasonal ascent toward mute fury
The cough of charred lungs plays its notes
as the onset of dawn pours over and on

Peculiar trees envelop the sleeping senses
growing in inflated time like ivy
Boundless, reaching branches
Tentacles of burrowing roots quiver and grapple
with the hooks and spasms of hooded thought

Dwelling over the oversized furry magpies,
the clarity of the sky,
sun dyed spellbind
Creatures slumber around unstirring ash,
dreaming away the thievery
The barking pup, a watchdog
a morsel between a morsel

All is quiet in the house of dead fire
The sun, four fingers into the sky
Nicked remnants of a celebration of coincidence
Déjà vu platforms, cosmic replicas
gifted at once, from both ends of the ears
Omnipotent whispers, sun seething into fog

Trunks formed from triangles
The moaning of the long dead
reverberating from gutted pumpkins
cackling at the living
with the ominous hee haw
we can’t help but hear

(how to go about listening?)

Well tuned monsoons swelling,
planks buckling with water
seeping up into stumbling feet
as the boat writhes on the collision of waves
the implosion within itself
While all is calm beneath
and the tendrils of the anemone softly sleep

Viscous dwellings scattered on low turned
hills rising out of the descending valley
Quelling the murmurs of snakes,
subduing the symphony of the sun,
resounding in its infancy
Until it gives way to the silent roar of day
leaving only the wind to tremble in its wake