Just beneath the sun 

Dwelled a splendid silkworm, one 

Whose cocoon was almost— 

“No, no. That’s not right!” 

A rape is no less likely 

Because you wrote a poem. 

The world will not rise 

To thank you for its eulogy. The truth 

Is not lit by an illuminated lie.

I find it odd, how familiar 

A stranger can feel 

When there is never 

Any doubt they are friend 

I was born in supernova 

Bid to wander icy reaches 

The light of stars, the life of Earth 

I knew them not but for a pull, 

The hike begins in concreted, Cretaceous shale 

Before rising toward smoky hills of chalk 

Where awaits valleys of bentonite swales 

That hail as heralds, the hogbacked rocks. 

Man was small

And the world, Big

Man was prey

Hunted by all.

Timescarred Jackals half-submerged in sand stand

Guard—though over what, none have lived to tell.

With rumors coming from lost caravans

Of how the wayward hear a haunting bell

Where would dreams grow

If they could not be bought?

Would they root in the fertile loam

Of a bored imagination?

A lone and mossmarked stone wearing a crown

Of twigs and leaves and eggshells broken down.

Old and forgetful stone it is,

Senile it would seem and maybe so.

It does not remember when it was sown.

Like a ‘previously, on Earth,”

Each ancestor gets its due;

To tell again the story of

From where, from when, to whom

Organs long past expiry sit alone.

What teenage crush from bronze-age romance lives

Like a genie in the eroded air

Of her heart’s canopic jar?

And presented with those words

That a thousand times have thatched

The leaky roof of love,

Death will hand us each a horn.

Two travelers one unhappy night

Met on a moonlit moor

Each warned of a raging storm

Soon upon them to descend

This is a letter to my unborn son

So you’ll be a better man, one whom

I have never been. And if too soon

I die. May shine your future sun