Be Well, Tomahawk

Twin hurricane that needn’t, yet still rips through a brute of wild, Under buck fur, the antenna signal hums, as dog fangs set to the wireline. Skinned silence stretches across my back. I cover my eyes with conviction.

Boot-first into a bear trap on the trapline, Some hide and pulse beneath leaf litter, Laid a wound to rest in the steppe, meanwhile, praying for an angel to will me, To hold lace curtains apart at an open window, And windsweep this sorrowful wheat.

I hold on to the leavings, Everything of the dogged man I am, Hammered through the knotwood of the brave boy I have shielded inside. Drumming white-knuckled fists against the severing, The touch of feral skin brushes a bound trail mark, and the sky says nothing and there are signs of mercy, Calloused hands,

What we do not reckon with will outlive us.

I threw my burdened stones across river ripples, My inheritance lowers my head beneath the tall mountains. Ever-more covered eyes on an orange-torn sky above the sawmill, Howling into all the swallowed distances, A brief werewolf witnessing his reflection in the tundra’s summit.

Here I rest, holding hooves and twisted antlers, Throwing static storms over the meadow, And I stand still between axe and timber, Sharing a naked body with a twin hurricane.