the leather soft and supple nothing went to waste       those days remember? when the grouse came round       so trusting             even as I took two down                   sffftch! sffftch! limp-necked home                         for the hearth pot       arrows make so little sound

hard scrap of a life to be sure but remember popping back to reality Daisy’s paintings fading in your hands dog and girl still clutched to my chest still petting that sleek-furred schnuffler’s pelt as it surrounds the fade of my baby girl’s dreams the rain out the glassless gap in stacked-branch walls my hand-made hut alive with the ocean’s blood sifted clean through cloud kidneys crashing into consciousness aaaaaahhhhhh

peaceful, that hard scrap

these days it’s a podcast i buried the book i’d made for her a season of preparing unplentiful papyrus three moons tanning Schnuff’s hide post-jackal let go that past life joined them both in the ripening soil to bide my time sharing my spirit with an army of ants worms, beetles, frogs, mosses, mites, moles, and mongeese and ohhhhh, how i long once more to be a forest but reincarnation’s a dart-hurling drunk, so here i sit before you the child of a family that ate and burned the orchard of me finally back in a form to remember to yank these earbuds from their nests lest the rain outside these too- thick walls pass in whispers unheard by these hungry ears hoping, these days, hoping for a taste of an ancient loved-one on my tongue twirling face-up to the cycling sky

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