In my cave hungry babies
And a mate believe in me, the hunter.
Soon I descend, watch for lurking
Eyes that will pounce on me if I am reckless.
Wary, I stalk obsessed,
Sharpened wails from the cave behind me.
Eons ago I would have covered myself
With furs, my oily hair matted,
My feet dragging in the mud and dust
Of a land where terror was simpler.
Now I wash and shave, groomed
In pinstripes, a tie covering my jugular.
The spears I use are words carefully thrust,
Couched in smiles designed to disarm.
My quarry is captured and soon bound;
I return with a contract, or an animal
Draped across my powerful shoulders.
And somewhere in other caves,
The cost is hunger, the blood of my stark
Victory unmistakable in frightened eyes.
If s me,
deserted like your folded shadow
dropped into your tight-lipped voice
blackened under snowy prayer-filled
ground that shrouds the sky. Everything
degenerates: the leather of your cowboy saddle,
your Mexican silver-buckled belt
Mom gave me without expression when you left.
I remember time twitched a little
as we walked the cobblestones
You and your immigrant brothers laid down
in thousands to seal the mud
of your beginning so lumber could be stacked
neatly in piles. The wet smells
of rough Eastern pine and spruce, Western fir
and hemlock, Southern oak, maple, and hickory.
If only I could relearn my small steps
up among those faithful, vigilant boards,
hear you command me out from hiding
places to stand on the edge of nothing,
lurch out unprotected into certain gravity,
then be caught below in the iron of your arms.
The lumberyard lies dead, morning light
has crept in to silence the drowsy owl,
you and I have lost all chance to unspool memory.
At least look at me once more
with your pulled-down face so I can feel
the weight of your collapsed life.
They will bury me just the other side
of this path, where the earth waits
to press me down one final, speechless time.
Then I will watch bats wing continually toward the moon.
For Mike Axinn
There must be some mistake.
The bull stands confused,
foreigner in this strange arena,
banderillas suddenly jabbed,
hurting like thick syringes.
Picadors ram dulled lances
between his shoulders,
grinding out his power.
He struggles valiantly
to lift his head,
to defend against these cultists who demand
his attention for their rite
and sanguine sacrifice.
Priests on mounts never offer conversion.
The bull suppresses rage,
tries to reason as usual
but they have judged him
an infidel.
He no longer has a choice
and must accept
the sword as truth.
He thinks of young Isaac
but God does not send the lamb.
There is no mistake.
beyond cold and comprehension
past stashed universes
where God contemplates
the shapes of cosmic islands
where the dead have escaped
old bones and cacophony
where I almost remember
the tingle of first kisses
my children’s uncorrupted faces
slipstreams and winging
into the white mystery of clouds
the musty smells of August’s forest floors
smoke and wildflowers
there in that wondrous place
where night and day
are always the same
where the end or the beginning
never matter
there I would bathe in the strong
rich colors of infinity
I have examined your mouth,
searching where your words are born,
grown wet and warm
in the dark placenta of your mind.
I am drawn unswervingly toward them,
my answer to kiss you,
the muted wind watching
the small lantern of our universe.
Astronomers create computer models
of young blue-hot galaxies
colliding,
pitching billions of stars
out of comfortable orbits.
They remind us that swirling gases—
the stuff we come from—
gather for astral copulation;
snippets of stellar
sperm are sucked inside black holes
so powerful all matter vanishes and may end up
down or sideways in someone else’s universe.
Finally, electrons reach us from these
birthed beacons after
billions of years,
galactic firecrackers popping off,
flashing their signatures
like flaming Vikings set afloat on boats
pitching on an undulating sea
that may indeed curve time
back to its beginning.