Porcupine on the Road to the River
last night’s double vision of car lights.
Everything disappeared.
One spine after another,
light went out the brittle needles.
Today we drive past,
a man and a woman
talking ourselves backward in time.
Words go out
sharp tongues that have touched one another
rattling an entire life
of salty love
and anger that is its own undoing.
Porcupine, sleepwalker,
that defense quaking the air
breaks down.
In its eyes
we are on the other side of life,
still living.
Behind us the red-winged blackbird
keeps vigil on a cattail.
He opens his wounds,
a sleeve of fire.
I take it in
my own eyes to the river.
Everything reverses.
the blackbird grows smaller,
becomes a speck of singing dust.
The road lumbers and clatters
beneath the porcupine’s red and black
diminishing world of salt.
One way or another
the earth is after us.
Let’s lie down together
before it stops us in our tracks.
Let’s lie down on the bank of the river
and listen to water’s pulse.