At the Tomb of Naiads

Deep in the woods, a small horse

with ice

like black tackle in its gray mane

eats the fresh snow.

Two white keys

on a piano are struck at once

and the horse lifts above the trees.

The stars are signaling to me.

I am so sick

of the miraculous creatures

settling in their red beds of floss.

There’s the unfiltered Pall Mall

Eisenhower would have put

in the mouth

of a dying gunnery sergeant

who smiles

there in the snow

with a big orange moon sitting

in the pines.

He coughs. And that crazed shit Hitler

is dead. I am born

somewhat egocentric

with my mother’s blood on my shoulders. Now

Hiroshima beads up

in the white slick on my small stomach.

Everyone grows shy

for a quarter of a century. They eat pie—

the aliens are arriving

in silent silver cigar cases

to observe the mass extinctions.

I was born in candlelight

in a late winter thunderstorm.

I begin to eat snow. More ships

leaving the Pleiades

to visit our Equator.

And furthermore

several nuclear wars

have been averted

like the eyes of the Naiads

eating the snow that the dogs have yellowed. . . .