These days, the fingers of a diagnosis
blanch with welter, blue with
weather I don’t say, not aloud, not
within spitting distance of anyone.
These devious days are sunburn in the mouth,
eye crackles. These days in disguise lean me
into vertigo, tender
tendon to bone with me.
This yelp-year’s skin tingles
in fog-blotch to blood-buzz,
and lack-hackles of imagination
are too much
light and shivering.
Something inside’s
too vigilant.
Something inside’s
mistaken itself for something else.
Wolves see each other seeing.
Wolves plan ahead. They posture, they play.
Leave me be—I’m thinking-thinking-thinking,
dog-tired, these dire wolf days.
I’m howling harmonics
to the yap-edge of a universe of elk
—not in warning but wiling time
and wanting not this exactly but something
to be true.