Jun 25, 2007

Any Better?

They Shout

—all day, the men that fail to bring coyotes
out of storm. In the beginning, they poise
in narrow rows like garden flowers, heavy
with hesitance of failure of what happens;

then the thunder and the lightning, and
they spread. Do they find the lightning,
wrapped in yellow, intimidating? Waves
rise, up
to bees, to birdsas though

they are wet, blue answers of Babylon’s
tower, and not just waves; the harbour
rocks in the wind; and men sprawl beneath
tufts and bushes like antelopes for shelter,

a few dead, fallen. They hold and get held
by each other. I attempt to help but no
help is given. If today the light means
the end in its wash-grey— then I will die

here, as the rest, look up, and the light
will turn, the sky become sacredom. . .
What would the flesh taste, if flesh is all
I could taste? I mark the gull that passes

over—in fright—in feathers of course,
imagine, as with a leaf that seems to stop
half-flight, mid-flight, through the light,
the burned feathers of a gull, its roasted
flesh. I lie, in tufts. The sky turns blue to
sacredom.

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