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I.
Last night I dreamed
you were an eagle,
diving into
a desert highway
that used to be
a riverbed,
bringing up fish.
This afternoon
in the newsstand
I thumbed through
The New Yorker,
reading Gary Snyder's
poem about an osprey
that casts no shadow.
I should be anywhere but here,
sitting on a runway in Boston,
waiting to fly to Cochabamba
in half-mad hope
that the ghost of Che Guevara
might offer my still too Catholic soul
some strange redemption,
but every feral heart knows
it has no home,
all the eagle feathers in the world
can't make me fly,
and the runway refuses
to crumble back into the ocean.
Still, big wings
beat wildly
in my chest,
longing to fly with you
in the sky above the canyon,
tearing at each other
in ferocious rapture.
II.
If you
are the coyote priestess,
I am a coy-dog,
half-breed bastard
who passes well enough
to be let in by the fire
until the hunger moon comes
and I sing al night,
keeping the whole house
awake until dawn.
Cast out in the snow,
I follow your tracks
and the scent of your estrus,
dancing on two legs
and howling.
III.
We both know
the secret –
no match was struck
in the moment
before the monk
caught fire,
instead,
a strange heat
rose up
within him
fueled by
an anguished desire
to no longer
be human.
to burn away
anger and desire
and finally
become pure flame,
with its harsh compassion
that obliterates form,
dissolves attachment,
ends suffering,
and we have known nights
when fires smoldered
in our own chests,
threatening to melt skin
and muscle
and bone.
The instructions are clear:
when shapeshifting
the body must
remember its love
for its originial form
or that form
will be lost forever.
The night we conceived,
I saw you
turn into a mountain lion
and sang you songs
to coax you back
into your body.
When it was over
I carressed
your smooth skin
and tasted its saltiness,
memorizing
curve of hip,
swell of breast
so I would not forget
how to sing you home again.
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