Red Night

Red Night


Shades of legs walking down corridors
In thunder, under the red sky after
A storm has passed on to the east.
I can see them moving to the country,
Which is now full of ground mist
And damp fingers of summer life.
These delicate limbs, engineered to
Hold such a great weight, bounce
Rhythms deep within the earth, hollow
Beats on the chambered ground. They
Call many things to life, as they have
Done with changes in themselves.
The first were light, smaller and clawed,
With spotted backs like fawns, with
Bright eyes that ringed themselves
And searched the fireless nights.
In the madness of fear, these small things
Grew stronger, faster, grew rounded hooves
To pound through the open nights,
Baring teeth and throwing power through
Muscled limbs. Wolves would fall
With legs severed at the shoulder, jaws
Shattered. Men would hang from painted
Shoulders, cooking slices of flesh beneath
Saddles as they rode, merging flesh
To hide. In certain parts of the sea,
Some fell to the gaping mouths
Of sharks, slicking the surface
Of a new blood plain, streaked toward
Dawn in its madness. Now, as I watch
Them streak toward the night woods,
I look over their backs to see the
Vapor stained shapes of old lives,
Tragically articulated in the lines
Of still-living forms.


One screams out, holding
Its long jaws oddly apart, looking
Anywhere but where I stand.
Its leg is tangled in a bundle of wire,
Rusted and matted with leaves,
Impossibly complicated, digging
Blood from the bony shin, pale
With the dust of the passing herd.


In this dream I pull madly at
The bundle, with my own
Arms now impossibly tangled in the
Rusted mass, trampled and dragged
Without pain, somehow rising and
Falling with the staggering gait
Of the condemned.


Now it screams and twists
In the air, head down, biting
The metal like a dog, tearing itself
Apart, its whale eye glowing
With the reflected sunset.


The metal bundle is now a flame,
Darkness surrounds the circle
Of redness, blood on the ground,
The animal now dropped to its knees,
Still screaming, wheezing, weakening,
And I have disappeared into the flame.


In this dream I feel the ground shake
Once more. I feel the coming of another
Passing herd, and watch as they trample
The place of struggle. Each is all, and
They move as birds wheeling in the sky.
When they have passed, there are only
Embers left on the ground.