Knee deep in mud. For centuries, we have stood where the bogwaters suck.
In the grasp of the inanimate,

there are no straight lines. A sack race is good for a laugh.
And like the Lord’s own trumpets, funnels multiply in the muck.

Once again, darling, yours is a resinous, intimate whisper.
Once again, I’ll bring you pelts and sprigs of heather.

In meines Lebens Mitte: wie mit einem Zirkel punktgenau gesetzt. Nachtzug
durch eine Nord-Süd-Wasserscheide, ein herausgelöster Kilometer, langgestreckt,
du hältst ihn für einen Tunnel, fühlst die geschichteten Moleküle ganz dicht, im Flug
hoch hin an einer Baggerschaufel, die dich über aufgeworfenes Erdreich trägt.

In a factory where they make chloramphenicol
          cats          loiter

one—gnarled
          like a woodblock: waterlogged, barnacled
another—thin with an elongated tongue—
          a fireman’s hook
and the third—huge like a calm
          in the Persian Gulf

A jackal and a crow. Blood neither shed nor shared
between them. The dynamite, nearby, is armed.
They are barely contours, prepared
to escape the kernel of blackness and assume a rudimentary form.

Above them, thought balloons are floating. The cartoon repaginates
the seashore, windy, dry as bone.
When the rain falls, it becomes clear the photographer, buried to his waist,
was welded of bronze and focused on no one.