Wednesday 11 December 2013

The Dog Dreams



The dog dreams

He dreams of running 

Deep breaths etch
the shape of ribs.

Days’ shape is light, dark
fitting sleep between

thin membranous
remembering skin
stretched
over bones.

I saw the moon. The old
pockmarked scratched moon, cold
and milky with cloud, like a blind eye

mine ached and I saw it

was the sun, the day’s pallid body

crept over me and touched my face
and left quivering
my ribs at its passing.

The sky’s bone pale
comes and goes, dust
of days bones ground up and hanging
in the light

the cold circle sits
at the end of the long tunnel
like staring down a well
if such things were

The dog thumps over
the ground racing rabbits
from rummaging grass
Fur stuck with burrs.

And the world is green and brown
and blue and gold and the world is
and the stars are.

In the night’s almost quiet shapes
of leaves like jackals heads and dead
forms squeeze between the sheets
old food in teeth, drunk

with lethargy and the brain’s low
humming gloom
the thought you wake
with you can’t shift

it hangs about you like booze’s reek
and makes your bones to speak.

The old bones and new bones and
the bones in the ground
and the bones of star
and sun and tree and
animal and the bone
of the ear and of the brain and eye.

The dog dreams

The blackberries this year were bigger
and the dog dreams.

He dreams of running.

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