Converging, they vanish, one in front of the other—
the bear and the fish—
circling
patiently.
In belts of barnacles
souls.
Each one
shifts his weight from foot to foot
squints
as if having lost
a contact.

Gravity envelops the wrestlers and is squeezed
cylindrically. They circle.
A shivering redwood
up which the two scramble
finger to finger
unaware of each other.

As though grappling on the head of a pin,
or in a corona
of tree gas inflating the moon,
each hunts the other in the branches. And at last
they embrace. Astonished. Like wire rimmed
spectacles in a fire.

The first like a rhizome: knotted, moist.
The other: crackling. So inflammable
as to startle
a starling.

Both see in their dreams: a rock, a trigger, a handle,
an apple and an apple tree,
Cain and Abel.