Because it is not enough to open the door
or sit on the porch, I have to go inside
the clamor the crickets send up
after a morning’s long rain. I have to climb down
from the birdsong heights, let the water
wick my clothes cold and lick spit
salsify dabble my neck and eyelids with its kisses.
The nightcrawlers’ earth musk makes my dizzy;
they lie spent and glistening in the light of the clouds.
Now the bells, the bells! The succulent hell boil
clamor of their wings, singing the hearts
of the one sun deep inside the seeds.
Let us open the mud book and pray.
Even the slug glister looms: perfect firmaments,
polestar and moon, only now
my eyes too focus on the blur of the bells,
fingertip whorls spin sudden into music.
It is like drowning, chorus and string,
a billion breath-moaned horns breaking like waves.
Taproot is thunder and moss is rain,
the drum of it what finally wakes me,
or brings me back from some brink,
some light that held me down to pull me up:
or else it is the kettledrum rumble of the field mouse—
a shriek of terror, soar of the hawk descending.