I.
In the dream the doctors let me
perform the surgery myself. I doubled
my chin, peered down at skin that opened
to the scalpel without bleeding. The picture
blurred. Bad watercolour. Ferny murk, unfurling.
Arteries illumed the ultrasound to feed
a tumour named for leaves. Lymphatic fruit.
What was it I lifted from myself? Smooth stone
pearl-firm, luminous like a pigeon's lone-
some egg. I closed my fist around its warmth
and woke. Which experts now will tell me
whether the node hardened inside my breast
may hold some long-neglected itch
or else a new wet-feathered form of life?
The chipping of its beak
a measure of my heartbeat.
II.
Nobody wants to be a nature poet.
I get it. Sometimes it can be hard to love
the grass. Pasture blades make my legs itch. Pollen
plugs the sinuses. My aging body is of little interest
to the ants. Woodpeckers ignore me in their diligence.
So much for all those years outdoors, ensorcelled
with my wand of herbicide. Heirloom toxins
spraying rainbows downwind through the meadows
of my days. My motorcycle's thrum as much the music
as bees in the embattled thistledown, the wild
stonefruits erupting from mouthed cores
tossed to the underbrush. Below the overalls,
wrists daubed with nectar, petrol, poison. Lonely
with weeds, I rested in the shade of wilding pines
gathering dark needles in my boots. Waiting
on the biopsy, I set down roots from my bare feet.
And while I write, the smallest fly
parts fine lashes to taste the water from my eyes.
III.
They still make scalpels from obsidian. Pray
for a steady handed volcano. Under black glass
I'll peach-cleave, loose my stone. The budded plumule
hidden in the pit. This is the first year I've been born
in summer. I'd turn my dark hair red before
I let it fall. How else could I be this deciduous?
IV.
Eventually when I die of whatever, everyone
I've liked will have to live double forever.
V.
My love and I watch birds under the bridge
building their solstice nests from clay and spit.
We've invented a whole new way to kiss.
It is the same. It's new because it's now.
My singing mouth is packed with dirt
and seeds. I build a house of these and blow it down.
