Eat the bones of the world
like an unnatural mouth
in the tricky posture of opening.
The air stains your breathing
with cow manure smell
on a western wind. So stop.
Be no cattle nor cattle hand.
So eat the radiant bones,
the girding of the world.
In the growth of tailored pines.
In the corner cemetery. The road
cut into the bones of the world
so low you drive level
with the dead. You live
downhill from the dead
but they don’t sing to you.
You live downhill from someone
else’s dead and you must
eat the bones of the world
with your last tooth some day.
Some day with both fists
in a pantomime of giddy fire.
Some day you’ll wake up
in the revenant springtime
and eat the unforgiving bones,
morning to marrow, a dog
who licks the whipping hand.
