We were entwined in red rings
Of blood and loneliness before
The first snows fell
Before muddy rivers seeded clouds
Above a virgin forest, and

The sun has come.
The mist has gone.
We see in the distance...
our long way home.
I was always yours to have.

I’ve got the children to tend
The clothes to mend
The floor to mop
The food to shop
Then the chicken to fry

I keep on drying again.
Veins collapse, opening like the
Small fists of sleeping
Children.
Memory of old tombs,

A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since depart
Marked the mastodon,
The dinosaur, who left dried token
Of their sojourn here

I keep on dying again.
Veins collapse, opening like the
Small fists of sleeping
Children.
Memory of old tombs,

There is no warning rattle at the
nor heavy feet to stomp the foyer
Safe in the dark prison, I know t
light slides over
the fingered work of a toothless

Pretty women wonder where my secre
I’m not cute or built to suit a fa
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies.
I say,

We wear the mask that grins and li
It shades our cheeks and hides our
This debt we pay to human guile
With torn and bleeding hearts…
We smile and mouth the myriad subt

FOR DAVID P—B
The eye follows, the land
Slips upward, creases down, forms
The gentle buttocks of a young
Giant. In the nestle,