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