the magpies hid in the steeple
Dining on yarrow and boll weevil
And there were no people except for me
I came to the sea to write and to think
But I was so small next to my dreams
Like a mind who might try and cross the seas
Springtime came, no words on the page
And when I found a dodo as hungry as me,
I dragged her back to my lair by the sea.
Pushing forward so awkwardly,
I laid her bare on the eucalyptus
leaves in the ear of the cock.
It was hard, hard as can be
like an old stuffed goose
The artist who says little landlifts are just
And when at last I tried to
She thought I was a rooster
with the right kind of plunge
I fell for a call, so young and so bold
Really, I said you could love an old goat
but you're more like a toad
Like raging rams we butted our horns
I was a female stag kicking down the door
But then like a fishlet back into the brook
so I flew back to the states
But my sister was a shark
so the lion's share was weasels away
I once knew living on the street
A hard year went from bad to bleak
My skin broke out like when I was a kid
It was back to the clinic
for tar baths and treatments
they gave the same old speeches
But a year of lost and lost questions
If in fact I had fallen and cracked
Would I rise like a phoenix from the flames?
Or was I just an egg full of clay
I crawled all night and all day