Bear, even flying with the sun behind me
    The sky is dim

    With certainty I tell you this
    Pentad sun is falling
    I caw a long night before
    A sextet sun can rise
    A yellow yolk to drown out iron

    But enough of culinary gormandizing
    Talk of rudiment and griddles
    Excites me past the point of luminosity
    Seeing past the tip of wings brushing
    The edge of dusk in pointillism

    I caw the rain sweating out of
    Earth trees falling in like gums
    Of some old man

    I caw the wind
    Scattering picket subdivisions
    The bloated heifers of the Dairy
    Spooled into a grim salad plumbing
    Tin and barbed wire

    And Bear, I have not even rattled
    About the shaking Earth
    A dust of lime and cinder
    I tell you all the burgs along the coast
    Sister suburbs to Pompeii--and like Fox
    I'm sure the grapes are sour

    Bear--it is with shame I must report
    Anthrax has touched men's lips
    Whispering of famine, they like the Shrews
    In dire need of Locusts
    Have turned upon themselves
    First the tail then the quarters
    Finally in throws of personal phlebotomy
    Sampling a haggis of their own kind

    Bear--it is black and I am empty
    And I ask you, Great Believer, what is life?
    The flash of fireflies in the night
    Is the breath of Antelope above the sage in winter
    The creaking song of Aspen boughs
    Heavy in their weight with red leaves
    Perhaps we are their little shadows
    Running across the grass, losing themselves in sunset.

Copyright © Henry Oso Quintero , 2001.  All Rights Reserved.