Lover’s Leap (Bear Hunting II)

The sun bruises what grows

too much. With an amputated

branch snatched from the roadside

in hand, become king of the dead

woods, piss on any old log, eat

whichever bush berry looks

most sinful. Become the bear

bounding uphill in secrecy

to peel away your prey’s skin

and feed on the guts. It’s fine

to pretend about scars. Cut

your hair, speak some very

new growl. I can trap you

as bear or man. I can tear

an abyss in your stomach

when on the twig strewn path

just before the summit

I whisper I have a gun.

Last Watch of Hero (Lake Revisited in April)

Paper boats floated out and capsized

from the waves your hands

sent, dissolving to pulp before draining

to seed the bottom. You trained them

for a ruction with your slack folding,

assembling the fleet as carelessly as you turn

a calendar page. The illusion is that

they collapsed their bodies

independently. This is how to lose

a friend, to let a thing so fragile

be born in the dry heat

then set it out in damp isolation

without an arm to force it. The boats

request steering. Alone, they sabotage

one another, kissing bow to bow

and drowning in the Hellespont.

I was misled. I supposed

each ketch would sail tomorrow

when the weather improved. You

laugh hungrily when I tell you this

and look away, setting loose another

lousy paper tiger onto the tireless

water. The surface grins as

its belly fills with the phantom shipyard

virgin hulls condemned to the cloudy

depth of lake weeds

never again to sail in the sun above.

Wintersound (Lake Revisited in February)

Pawing across the ice in self-sameness, two dogs licked the melting lake

on which they stood. Someone may have called from the shore. Someone

may have thrown dynamite. The trotting feet quickened to reach the other

end. Horses fell through and froze beneath last winter, gallop suspended in

a taxidermied rage. Perked ears of dogs, horses shy from the boom. Not one

flirts with trapping. The feet are mouthed clean to ward off frostbite. Glue

of the lake, let pass these animals and keep me foundered here, stuck swift

to your surface. Melt me past the bones of the drowned ones and decay

me until next snow, when I’ll gaze once more at the feet passing overhead.

Funny (Bear Hunting I)

On the honey slick grass

beside the road a garter

snake was tire flattened

and folded over itself

like a child’s trick maze

without start or end. Air

hanging with heat waste

I set out to hunt the bear,

a dim bulk of shadow put

out in daylight. She wants

her cubs to learn her heart

beat and tap it back with

claws in the soil as they

stretch out in the noon

breeze, drunk on the sweat

of the day. My only love is

skinning them and taking

their homes, staying too

long in their caves with

the aging meat. If I could

take this walk without

killing, I would hum

the purest country hymn

and rub my hands clean

with spit from my tongue.

But I’m gurgling blood.

I’ve made up my mind

about these bears. Pacing

well beyond the starving

insects, I push to whistle

no song you’ve heard

all to the rhythm of a

club swinging in hand.

Wet (Lake Revisited in July)

Washing away the salt

of an afternoon

he found me in the cellar

hugging wool to split

gravestone. I blinked

the dust out of sight

and sighed as thirty

years of soap caked

my hands. He wants

to know if I’ll wake up

without fingerprints

for the rest of the evening

or (wrench the dead

skin from my feet)

give my tender

soles to the wood

that carpets the path

back. Let me bite

on sandpaper instead

and grind these teeth

to pearl. My grandmother

sighed the same way

from the ice box

plating a breath of gas

as she swelled up

water in the brain.

I know he breathes

the death of the summer

and when the marble breaks

he can tumble with me

low into the lake at night

where we’ll rest at the bottom

gazing up at the soft ghastly moon.

Buddy (Lake Revisited in August)

The mews keep sulking overhead

as an imprint roars on water.

This is the caligo, young cloud

which rains attar onto chain link.

Follow under the bony bridge

and trail the firth, slim and beading,

a boildown of the lake in which

flowers for the first time grew tongues

and cutlips sprang up like arrows.

They thrust past the greening blooms, slick

with an algal coat. Go chin first

into the murky bed beneath

suspended leaves and rippled orbs.

Go catatonic in residue

milked from the stones that lay before

this false funeral. Children laughed

at the lip of the shore, digging

catacombs now sawn asunder

by foam’s gentle lappings. With mouth

open from beneath the press of air,

gaze into the still world above,

quiet as the surface swelling,

and swear away the nightlit earth.

Now wait for the lungs to desist.

Locksmith

What hell these legs maneuvered in fog

of muscle, stretched and snowy. Your friendless wing

made time for its own paralysis

and each pore surged lightning, the beating it earned.

The whines of so many spiderlings

nascent and drowsy in aureolin gauze

became the tide of this trick. Fondly

I devoured my mate in the nursery

drinking first from his terrified heart

until I’d sucked the rest, sparing just a shell

strung up, a bogeyman, a cuckold.

Did you come for the corpse or the golden strands?

Simply you flew from the underbrush,

arboreal beast who quit his home and song

to be bit. Your neck carved immobile

and I bit. The eyes bulged and the jaws split wide.

Where was the low rumble of toxins

filling tissue, stiffening like lock and key

rusted together? Not a whistle

from you, cadaver. Left now to wild molting

and dangling Christ-like. The widest chest

bit and stuffed silent with the brightest sawdust.

The moon’s white progeny opened up

in the dead fallow, hale and rapt in the gilt.