Daniel Barlow
Conversations With A Peccary
i).
i wanted to say a bit about purpose, how it is,
a person can be whom-so-ever he chooses; one organism lays itself on top of another : forges itself,
as a tooth : we are star-
children, light slips into the forest.
we are star-children. light slips into the forest.
ii).
light sits on the leaf, full of the hour; a tête-
à-tête, a communion. light sits on the leaf - nuzzles the foliage.
iii).
one organism sets itself atop of another. we are star-children. light slips into the forest.
iv).
across the forest floor and from that dappled hide: the yaw of awakening.
i am the
jaguar; forcing its teeth into your skull.
In reference to Jo March
there is great pause in this
like the dark
of the sky
when it houses
the things you
don't know
one time we went eeling with my father,
trekked all the way to the river-mouth
& it scared me
because-
i couldn't swim - and there was the sea.
Architeuthis & A North Atlantic Sea
"I am ready to come home now" –
pulled from rocks
at speculator's point
where all is dark
and the river a sonorous song.
Architeuthis hunts me –
I can feel his eye
and the shadow of limbs all around me,
but he waits –
he waits and does not strike.
Today I am all at sea,
denied even the comfort
of a pacific drowning,
contemplating footholds
in the wash of foreign waves –
Pray Architeuthis, will you hunt me?
but he moves –
he moves and was never there.
Today I was near to death, as I have ever been –
because I do not do well
without the kids, and because
more than sometimes
I miss the crunch of mussel shells
and the fluting flight of the wood-pigeon
through fern bed and kauri woods.
I miss even my, Architeuthis
though he blinked and was never there,
I knew his song, it was embedded in the whale –
and breaks the surface, finding air.
I bide you your half of the atom
Death is a lady,
the lady wears a train, a brief mitosis
lifts off the landscape, flies
bees are what you are –
going to Nagasaki.