In Adoration

I have never been a dragon

Or leviathan or a snake,

Not even an eel or an olm,

But I like to write about them,

To fashion these compositions

That murmur and whisper their names

Because I’ve often been broken,

And my world is broken by days,

And I have taken these pieces

Of bone brittle, crushed vertebrae,

Of little shards of words, and played,

And arranged them in this long snake,

My phony fossil in the clay,

My Piltdown monster, my mammoth

Serpent, tusks pointed the wrong way.

Sometimes, I imagine these bones

As something near the imagery

From Natalie Diaz’s poem,

“Snake Light”—“the snake’s broken body

In adoration,” “whip of ink,”

“Black knots in the air,” “the blue milk

Of an eye.” But that’s not quite right.

Her poem holds the whole snake, blessing

And considering its conceits,

Its muscles and venom, its names

And meanings in the many strands

Of languages—speaking, reading,

Writing—that are her traditions,

That are her life, not mine, that come

From the live stories of her life.

I lack enough feeling for life.

My terms are not muscled but ghosts.

I am a dusty curator

Who pretends to understand bones,

His own and those from long before

Curators, curiosity,

Prayers, traditions of signs, or cures.

I keep no venom, no skins. Sins.