Thaw
Sunless
afternoons. The world is grainy,
my cave eyes half blind.
Water scums frost-clenched soil,
old cloud furrowed like rotting snow.
The bonewhite core of earth
pushes through dark-trenched skin.
Too patient, my body creaks like
bare birch in sparse wind,
a peace like leaden hands
laced over nose, mouth.
In
the stubble forest, brightness widens
around a thin doe and sparrows.
Miles off: the groaning, cracking.
Tremors beneath my feet.
Breath returns, uncalled,
swelling winter-carved spaces,
small noises loosen in my throat.
I stretch within my heavy skin.
Groundbreaking
In
the dried bowl of the lake we dig packed clay,
The belly skin the big water sloughed,
shrinking into herself, thousands of years ago.
We peel aside her new green fur, the gravecover,
read her flesh-print, gather her bones -
grey shale and sandstone - at the feet of broad trees.
We scour the intricate soil scrawls for the worms'
translation of silt clod and sand dust,
hear leafy mouths of cottonwoods whisper
the wisdom of what the roots have seen.
Words scatter like silver flocks of alewife
before our shadowed hands. Our shovels slice deeper.
Bright sediments chart the lake's slow body-weather,
colors record her dream of pumpkin, oak,
and ash, pushing from the new-bare belly.
We tear the strata loose, send up dust like prayers
and enter our delicious ruin:
our toes, blind grubs, bite in but cannot eat.
Frog
On
this gut-stained pad I spread your limbs,
prepare a blade, and begin to indulge my curiosity.
I guide unbiased metal into your thin flesh,
tear soft layers into ragged wings.
Rumpled moss jacket slides from your spine;
muscle pools around bone-twigs - your inner bog
Basalt eyes roll in muddy-gold globes.
White light glazes everything:
clear liquid from your pierced nape, droplets
from your refrigerated pool, a deflated eye's stream.
Electric
syllables threading your still-sensitive body
scroll beneath my needle, flutter across a screen.
I fill a book with numbers, crude translation.
Neat columns swell my understanding,
as extra bread swells flesh around the bone.
I quiet my machines, close your cottoned mouth,
put out the lamp at last. Rain-grey light
falls through the windows.
I inter you in the white ice box
and turn to tread the muddy grass
three stories down. Inside me
captive moths beat themselves to dust.