Back in the earliest days,
a person could become an animal
and an animal a person
so sometimes the animals were people
and the people animals
and it made no difference.
Sometimes the person drank the wine,
sometimes the wine the person
and you’d wake up in a heap of puffins,
not feeling this dreadful falling off
and piling up that we’ve come to call
normal life, pronouncements
stacked by the doorstops
to be assessed and kicked through,
the gym full of nymphs showing off their implants,
fat spiders and shorter days,
apparatchicks issuing demerits.
In the earliest days
there was no nagging question
of What do I do? and never
enough time to do it,
Where do I belong? and How
can I get away? Rain
was a horizontal lake
you’d float in, fog
in fog slippers sneaking off the path,
shaking the smallest of bells.
And when night came as a black bird,
you were another black bird
and no one tried to strap a message to your leg
or make you repeat a stupid phrase
or honk while you tried to parallel park
or tell you how to cook your own heart
while lecturing you on etiquette.
When night came in its night-spattered cloak,
you’d put on your star pajamas
and vanish into it
and it would vanish into you.
DEAN YOUNG