For Gustaf Sobin

From Clayton Eshleman, this morning, this poem:

FOR GUSTAF SOBIN

Radiating in my shroud
I governed my matrix
wandering Egyptian anima mundi,
sensing in these parent powers
a deeper larval plait.

What was it to see then?
As if with water halfway up one’s eyes,
a shimmering miraginality,
breathed blood, non-bioquestioned breath,
walking in carrion-coifed time.

A dimpled slug with rabbit ears.
Equilibrium: cone-shaped loaf, vase of water.
Fecal rainbow undulating through an alabaster jar.
Light entombed in gneiss.
Carnelian amulet. Stromatolithic haystack.

Like you, Gustaf, I’ve risked wordwreck to excavate
a buried mouth, to release its stumped
root whirl.
         Every crocodilian kiss
stimulates the soul gown, the veiled animal heads
strutting through our combines.
Stare hard into the atmosphere,
Little Red Riding Hood is there as a rose-colored wolf,
or as an ashen wet-suit
in which, through the smoke hole of the mind,
we shimmy down
our skullracked, sand-
blasted psychic backbone.

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