There is thunder in your eyes, ground strokes and steppers
That eddy-up under boorish clouds in a regatta of sparks,

Torrents beneath thickened swells that strafe along walls
Of incontinent depths. But in the deader calm between

Parallels content on delivering salvation's edge, end of earth
To another . . . go no further, leave these souls that anchor

Their rituals to myth, raise their sails to a greater pilot and
Return us face down and silent to these waters made flesh.

Daily we drift nearer, wrung out of idle and dreaming
Under a sun whose miniature of life stirs in the calm float.

Our schedules and cares destined for a new world's promise now
Forfeit to a sea's fin de siècle, hump oil and smug belongings

As the hoof of these latitudes bares down to remind us
That we drag its oar with conviction.

            "Natural Selection ... is as immeasurably

               superior to man's feeble efforts, as the
               works of Nature are to those of Art."

                               -Charles Robert Darwin

Humanity by sight covets nudity in nature,
Like a peafowls variegation, arrayed as sexual or vestigial
Draws drabber peahen observation.

And truth as short limbed, stocky, tapered,
Is runt to carnal aberration, a two-legged pathology wakened
To an addict's numb sensation.

As much discourse in comme il faut,
Holds brute naive imagination, a manmade vanity over species
More divergent, lesser groomed.

For all of nature mindful, feeding,
With hindleg, hindsight, tail or claw, returns to earth,
Or comes to grips with both eyes closed.

The ceaseless movement of wind over earth,
This is like breathing.

The ethereal form, the visceral form,
The clair-obscure of all final

Analysis achieved, is blue sky. This is
The loving; the language of blossom

And bloom, the burgeon of reality spun
From skin and heart and bone and

But for your leaving, the silver cord
On trailing gown, the play of

Little gods of word and deed.
We search the stars with your eyes

The earth with your mind,
Loving all we see and in this believing

The eternal will return.
Will return her, hair veiled in fire,

Spirit in a bell jar's keep,
Soul of a mother of a mother.

Will return him, delicate voice to bellow,
Full-lipped and phallic mouth drinking, drinking.

Will return you daughter and son,
Twilight on my breast, moon of this night,

Hold them up to face, face pressed close to mine,
This is like breathing.