The Rivers I Have Hidden From The Sea / 2011

All Animals (I-VII)

All animals,
fossil futures'
muffled humming beneath the weight
of sediment and stone, quietly churned
to oil

Our lamps light landscapes,
the dark of day broken
by a bowl of starlight -
the missing mass of matter
found in filaments of galaxies -
dead and buried we join the soil,
a final bedrock resting place

To lie down
with a thousand dead horses
in the fields of Little Big Horn,
To sink down
with remnants of mastodons
in the asphaltum of La Brea's pits,
To fall down
with the weakest of an elk herd
in the dead, dark of Alaskan winter

Burn the last of what is left,
tall stands, hardwood mausoleums
of organic communion where
the time of Christ is marked
with rings,
just the same as yours or mine

The birds know no religion,
but fly closer to Heaven
than those who pray,
tame the beasts
for burden,
though a name for all
enslaves not even a single one

Our songs,
our books,
our tools,
our science,
our religion,
our progress

All impermanent,
as all animals succumb to time,
and we are only one of many
despite our imagined dominance