for Barbara York
Main
Beneath sheets of cauterized
stone,
feldspar gleams shooting off,
chip-size predators pause. Pincers
poised as if in shock,
a trick to lure stocks
of creatures they might
feed off. To lift a flake
and expose the sun,
to understand their
modus
operandi, the wiring
of souls that avoid
the light, the lie
of the land within their
bodies.
At Workrakine rock
the real is shadowed,
the wedge-tail hovers
far off to hone the
light.
Predating, satiating the envelopes
of our own bodies,
picturing with compound eyes
denuded vegetation,
rock dragons,
brine shrimp dried to dust,
fragmented amongst their eggs
in the dried out indentations,
the pools that aren't
holes,
the poisons we imagine,
cock-a-hoop, ready to strike
targets we can't see
through all about
the oceans of wheat,
grain suffering just enough
to yield both weight and protein.
