Dear Animal

Dear animal, I dream I have your lack

of being able to fail. It is all too real,

the panic and no hope, the invention of love

and then breaking it because it kills me.

I am left with only moving

toward places that remain secret and loud

like a second heart on a leash

I am walking. There is

an image of an oak in my head

and me walking through it. It means flying.

A rifle goes off in the next field over

spilling sparrows into the sky like marbles.

I find grass, and it’s as if an honest man

is telling me a story. Here, snow

means two things: blood

and hunger.

Measure this brick of faith in my mouth

girdled by tongue-muscle and hum.

All of these teeth must mean something

by now.