Deep Song (2003)

Deep in the body’s hollows
between bone transept
and gut nave, chilled in
the stone marrow of our lives,
there breathes a ghostlike,
garbled presence, half fish,
half horse, a hoarder of
old treasure in the
soul’s aphotic keep.

Here is the ur-father,
demi-dad, a galloper
on crest and surge,
a man’s man with
boulders for boots
and a cudgel for a cock.
Prime and primeval,
he’s balled down
there in the world’s vesicle,
his white magna
balled in every vowel.

When my words
revise to this line
they sink down to him
like skipped stones
at throw’s end
to irritate the shit
outta him (and you
don’t want to
piss off god whose
horse shits Texans).

His art is rimmed
with basalt keels,
the deep end of all ceasing:
to me this cry,
this ravening song
eared from stars
and poured deep.
For me the spear plunge;
for him, the feasting.