“There is the sunflower’s shade

—song of the rattlesnake

coiled in the boulder’s groin

“K’ak, k’ak, k’ak!

sang Coyote. Mating with

humankind—

The Chainsaw falls for boards of pine,

Suburban bedrooms, block on block

Will waver with this grain and knot,

The maddening shapes will start and fade

Each morning when commuters wake—

Joined boards hung on frames,

a box to catch the biped in.

and shadow swings around the tree

Shifting on the berrybush

from leaf to leaf across each day

The shadow swings around the tree.

2

Three, down, through windows

Dawn leaping cats, all barred brown, grey

Whiskers aflame

bits of mouse on the tongue

Washing the coffeepot in the river

the baby yelling for breakfast,

Her breasts, black-nippled, blue-veined, heavy,

Hung through the loose shirt

squeezed, with the free hand

white jet in three cups.

Cats at dawn

derry derry down

Creeks wash clean where trout hide

We chew the black plug

Sleep on needles through long afternoons

“you shall be owl

“you shall be sparrow

“you will grow thick and green, people

“will eat you, you berries!

Coyote: shot from the car, two ears,

A tail, brine bounty.

Clanks of tread

oxen of Shang

moving the measured road

Bronze bells at the throat

Bronze balls on the horns, the bright Oxen

Chanting through sunlight and dust

wheeling logs down hills

into heaps,

the yellow

Fat-snout Caterpillar, tread toppling forward

Leaf on leaf, roots in gold volcanic dirt.

When

Snow melts back

from the trees

Bare branches       knobbed pine twigs

hot sun on wet flowers

Green shoots of huckleberry

Breaking through snow.

3

Belly stretched taut in a bulge

Breasts swelling as you guzzle beer, who wants

Nirvana?

Here is water, wine, beer

Enough books for a week

A mess of afterbirth,

A smell of hot earth, a warm mist

Steams from the crotch

“You can’t be killers all your life

“The people are coming—

—and when Magpie

Revived him, limp rag of fur in the river

Drowned and drifting, fish-food in the shallows,

“Fuck you!”sang Coyote

and ran

Delicate blue-black, sweeter from meadows

Small and tart in the valleys, with light blue dust

Huckleberries scatter through pine woods

Crowd along gullies, climb dusty cliffs,

Spread through the air by birds;

Find them in droppings of bear.

“Stopped in the night

“Ate hot pancakes in a bright room

“Drank coffee, read the paper

“In a strange town, drove on,

singing, as the drunkard swerved the car

“Wake from your dreams, bright ladies!

“Tighten your legs, squeeze demons from

the crotch with rigid thighs

“Young red-eyed men will come

“With limp erections, snuffling cries

“To dry your stiffening bodies in the sun!

Woke at the beach. Grey dawn,

Drenched with rain. One naked man

Frying his horsemeat on a stone.

4

Coyote yaps, a knife!

Sunrise on yellow rocks.

People gone, death no disaster,

Clear sun in the scrubbed sky

empty and bright

Lizards scurry from darkness

We lizards sun on yellow rocks.