TWIST INTO YOURSELF
Sometimes I think we have
animal souls.
A sponge’s one, pierced.
A crab’s one, pinched.
A firefly’s,
for which you don’t even know whether it is there or not.
So we tremble like that
each one at their end of the room,
and the pains burn
and go out.
One cannot spit oneself out.
Or touch the vertex of summer,
or store an icicle in one’s undershirt
in the streets of winter.
Poppies in the dark.
I’ll cut that verse out for us
as a shelter
for the day when we are ready.