Poetry

Sinking Into The Earth

Always Both

Catapult and fire
the laws in our heads
collapse
against the bed
where we wait
alone
facing the other side
of this sheet
of paper
waiting
for the light
to find us
waiting
for a morning
of everything answered
when he remembers me
remembers why
when I can forget
my endless remembering

he is the timekeeper
he is the one who taught me
to walk along the edges of the smoke
we are now past
education
and into the occupation
of presence
love
the binds
of what we’ve become
through it
this isn’t a lesson
but an existing
my hands ache
reaching out to him
he is caught between the ropes
of light and the absence
of light

he is the lone
solitary
wolf
who is domesticated
at the loss
of his nature
he silently catalogs
the measure of his captivity
the cost of this piece of himself
missing
he lives some place far away
even in my arms

I live in the wake
of this measure
I struggle
against the dying of the light
I hunger for the wolf
that harpooned me
in the forest
and brought me to his bed
the force
that tore me down to myself
and patiently sewed together
the slashes left
by the bandits
made me steady
made me
a different animal

I left my palace
of the run
to stay with him
I hung curtains
in his cave
I brought my
many boxes
of books
I wanted to be hunted
in the conquest
of discovery
and to stand at the same
window
every night
watching the sun
dissolve

you see
I wanted the journey
and the arrival
yet every day
the silent engines
of that other piece
long for ignition

if you and I were
cut of the same stuff
he and I were stitched
by the same eye
the eye of the wolf
that stares out
upon the lacquered furniture
mother of pearl
surrounded by waiters

each
intoxicated
by the memory
of a forest
totally alien
to the other
reflecting in
leather sheen
light refracting
against something
polished
a long long time ago.

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