for broghen on his birthday

past lives



Once a feral dog
Whose fangs coaxed
The juice of carnivore and berry
Root, and howled for
Strange things afoot
In thoroughgoing turbid
bush feverish
padded soft
an Indian
whose hair
in silken knots
fell on feather bows
kindred to the fox
maize in ample rows
kill hung in rafters
drip dried nude betrothed
or look across
a cold colossus
whose blinking eye’d
crunch in a cold frost
victims bloodied and besot
reviled the hand of man
their petty thoughts
and inbred lust
a sense of sylvan justice
the majesty of trees
he’d be crowned, august
and finally – freed
from mandates and decrees
who’d meet his fate laughing
hold the tears of a sister
in a broad-armed embrace
a year older
thicker and thicker his carapace
under humble shelter
stored the salt of lovers
viscous brine to remember
a centuries quarter
infinite time
by sidereal measure.