Totem Poem
“we are reduced to this: this day and night,
primary gold and indigo, the binary profusion
of distances guessed at, heat and cold, colours
logged into the retina and lodged in the spine
we were dogs who knew the infinite is now,
that celandine was buttercup,that buttercup was marigold.
the dog star marked the dog days and the wild rose
was dog rose. the crow’s-foot was wild hyacinth.
by day the correspondences were clear,
i walked across the whin land. speedwell bluer than sky.
I walked across the whin land. Speedwell bluer than sky.
A practiced ear could hear, between two breaths,
deep space wherein the mind collects itself.
words foundered and cracked. Nearly
never bulled the cow. a shining isomorphousness
rang out. the roussignol sang all night.
all the colors were shuffled endlessly but never lost.
a practiced ear could hear, between two breaths,
the secret blackness of the snow
come flooding in. on summer’s lawns
the ice-melt sprayed it’s figure-eights from sprinklers,
and everything stopped working, second time around,
as if it had never happened before. fans,
moved the corpses of fireflies through the rooms,
supplicant, pathetic, pleading in brittle postures,
everything was magnified by their bug-eyed deaths.
we became solemn in that profusion,
of dying. cane toads fattened the asphalt
in the mist of the rain; our headlights caught them
tensed as if listening: they were waiting,
mute, for the imbecility of eternity.”
—Luke Davies
“death poem” by alysia harris
i want to live in her head for a day.
