I taste desperation disguised as passion in his kiss. See me. Want me. Need only me because I need.
They are what swim, what fly, what run;
they are the eyes holding firelight
in fear-touched hunger.
They are the plural as single and the one as many;
striped and spotted, feathered and furred,
scaled or catching hair against brambles.
It is what we are, the upright in the bestiary.
We are no more and no less
than these. Amber intelligence
blinks back at me as the eagle
strips her catch from its bones,
daring me closer to wingspan,
hooked talons, razor beak.
I have memorized the calculations
of a great horned owl skimming night silent,
adding the scrape of claw on gravel
and grass to rodent whispers
into his sum and swallowing it whole.
I sing coyote inked in packs
and running down prey
through woods I say I own,
but they are borrowed.
We say we are over them, but
they were given mouths
they were given voices
they were given breath.
If I say truth is elemental
then it is: I am no more and no less
than this thing that bleeds and gasps,
caught in the jaws of something larger,
a link in the chain that tethers.
We look for what is lost, that innocence from the garden; the place we were removed from for the price of knowing. But I have seen the promise of Eden, its beauty, the wild held in the eyes of eagles; joy a whale owns after its long exhalation; the magic inside the dance of dolphins I swam with once. Eden visits us; unscheduled, unplanned, and always remembered.
All he owns tied in that cloth
sticked and bundled over his shoulder, blind–
he refuses to see his path ending
because dreamers only look up, chasing
cloud forms and ignore gravity; the earth
pulling them close as they savor the sun.
If angels fear that molten sun
he will lift its spots, folded in his cloth
like souvenir stones, picked far from earth
in his dance with stars; a bright that leaves blind
anyone who dares look too close, chasing
that embered, smoking trail, deeply ending.
Not all drop-offs are endings,
if air allows his tread, as did the sun;
because all opens to a fool, chasing
what flies from his grasp, that motley flag cloth;
patterns floated on wind, dizzied and blind,
spun and blown until they rest on the earth.
I have walked the greening earth
with him, foreseen those trials that are ending,
told in finely-inked cards thrown for the blind.
He has shuffled and cut for the spread. Sun
covers him in the center of the cloth,
which means he can catch what he is chasing.
But what is he after, chasing
secrets until they stumble, sink to earth
exhausted, wrapped in watercolor cloth;
faint, transitory camouflage ending
and burned off by one who danced on the sun.
He carries light. It cannot leave him blind.
Truth this hard should leave us blind.
Only fools seek what is hidden, chasing
dark out of shadows and into the sun.
These are secret things, on heaven and earth.
To tell them all would be a poor ending;
a covenant broken with a torn cloth.
Blind by choosing, he skips above this earth,
chasing a rainbow that has no ending.
Sun can be shaded, but never covered by cloth.
The finch is quiet,
though still wings remember heat–
arcs of flight fading
I like to taste moments
in thick slices, like Vermont cheddar sliced too wide
for delicacy but great for grilling
this afternoon of careless shopping;
buying calendars on 01/12, half-off
though the year is not 2 weeks old
and instead of the word-a-day desk calendar I wanted
I find a daily Latin phrase one and offer the first
12 days I can tear off to my daughter,
laughing because I have given away
days already spent: up to amicus curiae
and will begin with ad captandum vulgus
tomorrow, which is a phrase I just learned to pronounce
and a skill I never owned.
Susan Daniels Poetry 