Alpine Summer
The afternoon hissing
hanging thick on
junipers, on jutting shale
An alkaline heaviness
*
Crushed snail—
smear and quiver
tapering shards
O ruptured cream-egg
of my blue-dog nights
*
The billow-green valley of
sedge and swell and rivulet—
darkling
The loping elk and their
unreasonable
banshee whoops
*
Bear shit is
dark loam and silence
Rich with seed
and pale writhing
multitudes
*
Granite country
slacks its jaw
opens up for
dusty libation