Echidna

Crumpled in a coign I was milk-tufted with my suckling

till he prickled.

He entered the earth pouch then

and learned ant-ribbon,

the gloss we put like lightning on the brimming ones.

Life is fat is sleep. I feast life on and sleep it,

deep loveself in calm.

I awaken to spikes of food-sheathing, of mulling fertile egg,

of sun, of formic gravels,

of worms, dab hunting, of fanning under quill-ruff when budged:

all are rinds, to sleep.

Corner-footed tongue-scabbard, I am trundling doze

and wherever I put it

is exactly right. Sleep goes there.