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At the thin edge of the wedge
in an unconscious savanna
encircling flowers and sly creation,
male and female once walked a wadi
a few hours before it was interred
by an eruption of volcanic ash.
Fire filched from lightning fields
had been coaxed into cooking bones.
Some became gifts, and messengers
some were simply put away.
Our knotted clans had deciphered then
a pure world. Palpating roots
alive for a hundredweight of years
offered germinations that measured
months without watching the moon.
Time in concentration
will soon unravel our mystery
under an uncovered scrub brush plain
where fossilized footprints
in dried dust remain.
BULLHEAD
Below yellow pines over porous soil,
a mess of bullhead was skinned one Sunday.
Uncle hammered brains and spun
curling souls. Aunt pushed plier jaws
into limply hinged mouths.
Lidless eyes tilted astride
a singular time of fleshy truth.
Uncle etched a silent entryway.
Folding back sepia, he incised flaps
behind the headıs automatic horns.
Aunt pulled against pulls,
gills flared like peacock tails.
She flayed jacinth fans of cartilage
with a wooden handled knife
and slopped fish ribbons
into a rosy, plastic basin.
I then endowed glistening remains
in a sheet of yesterdayıs newspaper,
to citizen scavengers at nearby woods
while birches surged into a wax paper sky.
FISH ARE AN ARDUOUS CATCH
With Januaryıs thirst unquenched
silted streams were stillborn in spring.
Our lake became sour and low.
Gulls
organize on a parking lot
into groups of chalky toys
squawking louder than in last summer.
Fish are an arduous catch.
Beaks and feet adapt to collect
a filthy lucre of crumbs and fries
scattered about the fringes.
As stalking martinets they are
also snatching at bent cigarettes
before wheeling like small dragon kites,
farther away from the lake.
THE FIRST TO FALL INTO SLEEP
A freight train bellowed from faraway
over shreds of freezing sunset.
Homes and cars in this tight valley
have become grounded reminders of stars.
Let me be the first to fall into sleep
under white November bedclothes,
for I have seen too much today
to hope to rise into livid evening.
My century is oppressively chimerical;
its gaudiness is mistaken for radiance.
I am a son among a million bewildered sons
who haunt quiet, productive afternoons.
Let me be the first to fall into sleep
for I have seen too much today.