A creature made of bush and red dust
keeps licking its bones on my doorstep.

I hear it wailing and thrashing
while my sons sleep.

I offer it water,
              offer it meat,
but it t h i n s t o p a r t i c l e
and        moan
               in half light.

At two, the hour of the night heron
and the new mother

a cell of starlit eels thread themselves
through the beams in the ceiling.

What holds us up is frayed and
not quite.

I dream myself into
moss wings and legs strong as mora

but in the morning I am clay again,
I am milk and dough and unhealed wound,
I am only task, only matter, only mass
only a rough gathering of others’ needs,
loosely woven, frayed

              and oh, time ticks me wooden and
              threadbare

from dawn till dark,     till the hour
of the fawn                      till the song
of the frog                        till the
deepest dream

where I am flying,          till the beast

made of bush and dust comes calling
                                             comes crying out

                my name

in the hush of spent rain
in the absence of sleep, in the violet

tunnel of stillness,

while my children sleep, while all light thins,
while I thrash inside the ache of being unseen.