my kind was taught
to chistle his bread from stone, since
if you could still hunger you became a man
furrow after furrow
we tore the earth open, filled
baskets and hungry mouths
there was a time when I followed my father
like a foal, my treasure-keeper
who dealt in colonies and proverbs
limited in words, expansive
in ventures, he was packed and
ready to drift to foreign shores
harried, he crawled
into the underbelly of various countries
peeled away layer after layer of earth
until the hell hound grinned
the creator is an idle youth in your veins
fluttering from flower to stone
I rumple up a bed of tides
I pluck flowers that no longer nod
pick up stones in my search for
fragments of my older double
I wanted to be like him
driver of mighty hooves and dreams
thundering across the steppes
the alchemy of thistles and flowering heather
steam from animals’ backs, dawning promises
like the smell of soup on the boil
greener grass on the other side
budding sorrow
the swansong of an Arcardia
the gold I mined
was the black earth’s
danse macabre
I melted it down with my own hands
fed children like seed to the ground
that gave bread and safeguarded love
we were children of this earth
just as our ancestors were contained in
the pollen of archaic flowers
we plucked it and milked it
until we became one with ground
and rock
we wait as patiently as forgotten fields
to be touched and smelled
like prehistoric flora dreaming
of eternity