Muskrat Skull, Albino Asteroid, Chunk of the Moon
Muskrat skull, albino asteroid, chunk of the moon
fallen to earth, ivory doorknob picked clean
by ants and wolves, half your teeth stacked like books
on a shelf behind the crescent moons of your fangs
and their reflections, as above so below,
that don't quite meet in the middle of the bridge
you're building like an engineer with overbite.
When I look down upon your cranium from above it's
a beautiful amphora, handles like arms at its side,
a woman hoisting her long skirt up to cross a river.
Musquash, you must be a holy food if they let the Catholics
eat you at Lent in place of fish because you spend
so much of your time aquatically. Do the wolves,
the owls, the foxes, the mink, the hawks, the fishers,
the feral dogs know they're enlightened
by the flesh of your body? You, alone, of all
the animals who tried and failed, the Gabriel
of the native creation myth that touched bottom
to bring back the starmud that made the earth,
the Gilgamesh of these Canadian wetlands.
Did a rat snake steal your herb of immortality
from the shrines of the cattails you build
at the water's edge, the bigger the harsher
the winter to come, like siloes you can take shelter in?
Little rodent, here by the river tonight, where
I'm sitting with my heart as skinless as yours
under the stars whose light feels like thorns of insight
piercing my blood, you are my only companion.
I look into the gaping sockets of your eyes
glacially excavated like most of the lakes around here,
though my third eye is aloof and impersonal
compared to the other two, and I realize
how ruthless enlightenment is, still, little guru,
I want to cry like a river that's come to rest in them
because I can see in you, like a locket of bone,
the same image of life, the Beloved,
I carry in the moonrock of my own prophetic skull.
Did the wolves do this? Did the pike eat your young
and cousin of the vole and lemming, you achieved
your climacteric like stars at the zenith of a precipice
and commit suicide at the atavistic urging of ancient enzymes?
Or did you die naturally like moonset in its crone phase,
the light slowly seeping from your eyes? Best fur
bundled up in yourself for the winter, your tail had scales.
What happened to them? Were they feathered
like dinosaurs into the boas of vaudeville strippers
that teased you with the mystery of their nakedness
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poem by Patrick White
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