YAWP

I sound my barbaric YAWP over the roofs of the world

Walt Whitman

It wasn’t the sound I wanted, or the thing

I hoped for, when I went into the woods

– nine years old and ready to be safe

elsewhere.

I wanted charms and songs. I hoped for

tiny bodies gathered from the dew

and folded in a length

of muslin, bruiseless surrogates of bone

and feather I could stitch into their cells

with scarlet cotton, singing them to sleep

or setting them, like candles, in a crib

of thorn and elder, ready for the first

good snow.

I never even thought of resurrection;

though now and then, grown old,

and safe no more,

I feel that needle working in its slub

of fabric, and the inference of matter

beating at my hand, more animal than faint

unravel, come to life beneath the skin

and tapping, softly, for the first drawn breath,

a muss of down, a beak, a nub of wing.