Two Poems

Arcadia

[wpaudio url=”/audio/8_3/Cain1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″]

Bodies close, backs in the dirt, safe
behind our zippered door.
I grip your wrist & stare where
the tent beams meet.
We hear the trees cry.

Then we are rustled awake –
my god, you say, someone’s out there.
But I know better, & imagine

a deer, nervous snout buried
in our half-eaten grilled squash.
I know I should step outside, but
cannot. I never want to leave
this tent, I whisper,

so we cower: one question
mark cradling another. We drift
to sleep. Lights race
on the canvas ceiling, comets

in a private sky. I will whisper
my songs in your ear,

tend you like a flock, nervous
on the edge of a grassy cliff. An arm’s length
from what’s beyond, if only

for a night.

Dark Wood

[wpaudio url=”/audio/8_3/Cain2.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″]

Midway in our lives, we stumbled
to the river in search of sun.
We stood on sharp rocks, clutched cans of beer,
removed our shirts, shook pale in cold,
breathed and stared in black water,
its currents churning in the haze of flies.

Seven mutts raced down the bank.
Their ribs protruded through skin,
as though their insides were sucked out.
One was muzzled
with a tattered shirt, twitching snout-
another begged on hind legs for the beer I held,
bony tail wagging, jagged spine poked
through fur. Down, boy.

I pushed him away,
and we saw the cross-armed owner,
greasy belly heaving over shorts.

How do you love
a god who doesn’t feed you?
Who waits until your body slumps, then tosses
you in his pickup like a bag of laundry,
buries you in the woods behind the liquor store?

Midway in life, I too look
like I’ve swallowed a birdcage:
it’s the pulsing sweat of darkness that latches
on bare skin,
pokes me like a needle,

sucks me dry. Why
worry? Even I may someday find
a withered joy to shake my body.

All around us, we hear a great buzzing,
and think, Locusts. That’s how it ends.
But it is only a metal bird of the modern world,
a plane flying low, swallowing us
in the shadow of wings.