Rarrr

EARLY IN A NEW YEAR

Maybe scientists have found Mozart’s skull

and it’s possible one man has brought

back from extinction the miniature zebra

called the quagga, but in both cases

genetic tests are not conclusive. List for me,

would you, what this world knows

about the next. And the ones in a chain

beyond these. Draw out the diagram

that will prove the rate of decay

in that star, that cobalt flickering one

we see each night in bed, and

in the calcium lode that is my femur, my thigh

where your hands, your mouth

have been – show me how it is true

I am receding from you like a star

and I won’t sleep at all. Dissolve

the endless parade of dumb

that is this story I keep professing

each morning. It isn’t me that dreams of me

orbiting the moon like a moth,

I swear. Somewhere within there is

an impudent cell that recalls

some other life, some other apple green world,

and when I am quiet and still,

when I stop speaking out

to the motion of the water ringing the drain,

I hear its story, I listen

like a child and in that darkness the monsters sing.