Hambone turns like an ox plowing,
his shoulder heavier than all the planets,
his head full of Cosmos, skin furrow of blue sky,
eye light as if achafed, as if afevered,
as if dulled as a path to nowhere.
He sees the Big Water, and it is
as if he is the shimmer of the waves
and the flat and the swell and the roll and the calm,
as if the wholeness of big, the bigness of a drop,
hanging from the prow, from the clear above,
from the nose, from the side of the eye.
He is a seahorse, a treefish.
He flies like a squirrel,
slithers through thick mud, a snakeman.
He has the head of a jackal, ready for worship,
the head of a raptor, the head of a brown bear arage.
He is Agamemnon’s hand, Luke’s accounts,
Caesar’s ear, Joan’s banner
burned with her at the stake, as sinful and as pure.
He eats the lily petal, recurved,
to forget the rain-snow. The sound of the gunshot
ripples through the geography of his skull. He
can’t forget the one who can’t remember.
He twists his neck atight,
twists again and again in memory.
