Primordial Sea
Black noon. A black wind
wrinkles the fields.
Night flowers open
like white gills to breathe.
Moonlight slivers my eye,
silvers my neck
which you open gently
to lick my oozing light.
We’ve become blind
and bioluminescent.
Our words part
the water into paths.
As we roam the lush
weeds of darkness
our eyes grow
backward into our heads
and Lord, I can see far
inside you then.
Here, the mind must grow into itself.
You are the thought
of the animal. Or the animal
of the thought,
walking on all fours through pines.
You, the thought of a word
in a shadow tongue.
Open your mouth—you animal,
not yet machine—and say
anything, speak your way home;
devour the violets,
electrify your throat,
your new-grown tongue with violets.
Find a path through it:
Think: a blizzard of clover,
a wildfire of foxes
pawing at the door.
Recall a name:
a pocketwatch
unwound to stone
in your hand
so you can hold it for as long
as you need.
Think the prison
into a garden,
your shadow
into a basket to gather
all the apples.
Think, prisoner:
a forest, a city
unsheathed:
think the floodwater
rolling back
all the bodies
that once covered the mouth
of the valley—
and all the bees fly out
and all the pollen
and all the sun.