that dark night

It is early in the morning
Late at night,
A mid-November night
In late September.

The dog sleeps,
Wet and muddied,
A musty stench
From his midnight feasting
On something too long dead
Beyond resurrection.

All is a whirlwind of blue-skinned
Krishna dancing in a vortex
Or Kokopeli hunching in the rain
Over a Kali Ma
Flute of bone
Of questionable provenance.
My words cower in the shadow
Of my inner jail
Doing time for unspecified offenses.

Even as the soybeans ripen,
Sodden in wind and rain,
As ripe as the stench
The dog brought home.

It is a Wednesday/Thursday once again
And I cannot sleep in this,
The irrelevance
Of wind and rain.

Soon enough there will be an eternity
Of one last Wednesday blurring
Into a final Thursday
With soybeans eternally ripening ,
Where every last tormented
Memory will be rotting flesh
In a three-headed dog’s
Toothless jaws.

Now my palsied fingers
Search out and find
The beat of pulse
Right there,
Here,
On the left side of my neck.

Right there throbbing out
A drumbeat for dancing
Gods and goddesses
And stench-filled memories
Before the morning comes.

September 23,2021