In The Stillness of Morning

In the stillness of morning
I hold your words up
against the light

to see what they might mean
above the moist cellars
of the dawning day.

In their slipstream
I'll have to feign lameness
like a skittish horse that has
gotten too fast within
shouting distance
of its rider's dreams.

For now,
the sun will apply the spica
and tomorrow, I'll ride out
on the storm
past your finish line,
with mice and monkeys
under unkempt clouds,

and I know
--tornados and latter-day saints aside--
the sky could fall anytime
not just over me
but all dormant seeds
in passing.

Body Lacing Blooming Clouds

Before I roll north,
I'll have to dive deeper
this time to feed,
stake your life upon it.

They sliced the surface
and made deals
with my midwives,
I heard the clink of coins
in their purses.

While I nuzzled for milk
past broken arrows, past
my mother's hard-pumping breath,
they snapped their teeth
into the belly of Eden,
heads in tails out,
tails in heads out.

Moving home,
toward the blooming clouds,
the seaweed laces my wounds
with my gasps, and I greet
night's gulling tentacles
like incoming ships,

for they rhythmically spurt
the luminous ink Jonah saved
long ago of my kin
to light the lamps of the world.

Malapertness: That Sort of Thing

One day, they
washed up on shore,
shook off the water,
probed their upward mobility
and hemmed themselves into
the topmost branches
of the only tree nearby,
close to an outcrop of rocks.

One evening, they
flicked their eyes around,
took in their dim shadows
with mutual guardedness,
stuck their fingers into
the forbidden patches
of sandy grass and
received a neat cluster
of bites in return.

Struck dumb, they
tried the morning.
From their satchels,
they hatched potent nouns,
misnomers, alas, meant to reflect
the shape of their wits,
but stalled, mon Dieu,
under the uptowering fog of dawn.

Slyly they smile and wait
for better times
that must be
just over the next hill,
on its aping fringe.