Do you really,
And do you want to talk with me, gentle spirit on a hunger strike.
The turn in, bedtime astride a wandering mare,
Coupled to how we used to be, hobbled
Perhaps in a field of moon lit weeds before the time of fences
When intercourse of souls was like a brook of water
Drinking the land with its little sounds sliding everyone away and
On to the next scene of the field.

The fenced bull, the silence of cats and eyes peeled
To see again how deep inside and how far the world might go
On strength of knowing one another.
The diminutive with an air tight keep sake
Dry and never opened but to raise the question,
Is she live or dead,
Never to raise questions,

The lines out the back of the tent where trapeze artists
In animal leotards hold concourse on the air and the nets below and
Profession of falling
Constantly with each other’s hands and grip
And feet and knees.

Ask us on,
Around the little fire with
Smoke smelling of oil and seeds and
Hay dried on the rick flaring up in the flames
Like cheat grass running, tumble weeds tumbling,
Dust filling in for air to mutter dry to the sun and wind,
To the night clear as caverns
Where a cataract of the stream falls from our eyes
As we fall from each other entombed
Or only entranced by earth.

Her little murmurings as beneath the skin,
Her earthquakes of feeling in the loin and hip and curled toes
As we rock the boats of the waves
And call the eyes of the dead back to our sockets
To tell us how the wet lands flooded
And the dam couldn’t hold.

We saw how personality collapses,
How hope emerges chastened from experience,
Wiped clean as a blade slices,
As the slaughter claims ritual ends and
The blood flows equally
Through the time of mortals on the breasts of birds,
The feathered, flowered carapace.
Take it up, take it out,
Rest two, three, four, rest.

Patience, stultification, patience
Hurry, hurry, fall, get up.
The last of the rasps
As sick bed and encore,
Toasting the glass together
By clinks and drains
As the scene shows the flickering light of the film die away
And the house lights come up
And as we begin to believe it is time to go,
We step out on plans and are gone
Two, three four…