long-toothed partner
in a sacrificial dance.
It lies down on the land
as I walk upright.
It has come from the swampy beginnings
of blood, lung, hand.
Killing is the prayer
before its every meal.
And in the dark nocturnal waking,
there’s the falling
to all fours, a wild seeing,
other ears hearing.
After breathing and clawing
is the solemn rite of sleep
that crosses
into dream,
that holds
council with foreign tongues
and common hungers.
In the sleeping bird,
the dream is flying south.
The male
is the dance before the female,
and there is fear; I am the enemy
dreamed in the restless sleep of whale,
bird, those who possess
the desperate gifts
turning the color of snow.
In the silence
of night,
in the warmth of human bodies,
are the nocturnal wakings.
Something inside gets down on its haunches.
At the borders of our beds
are the strange ways, voices,
the slow shifting of eyes, turning of ears.
They hear us, smell us, dream us.
We lie down
in the long nights of their waking,
the world of animal law,
the house of pelvic truth.