Harvest

Bring me the high heart of a trapezist.

If not, bring me the heart of a drunk monk

so I may illuminate an ancient text

in a language I can’t understand.

The brain too is blood, blood racing

100 miles an hour on training wheels

so let me splash through a red puddle,

let me kiss the face of a red puddle,

let me write my crazed, extreme demands

on the frost-cracked window of god’s split

chest, on the wind-fussed trees and people

outside analytically plummeting.

Bring me the zig-zag heart of a plummeting

angel straight from the bus crash. Bring me

a cup straight from the cauldron then

suture me up. The sailboat-shadow

of a sundial sweeps us all aside,

common song made your own with a pennywhistle.

Now bring me the heart of a panther

boiled in the delirium of an open wound

smelling of black sugars. Then bring me

whatever leftover twigs from the pyre

so I may make a resting place deep

in the bright-shining thicket.