water

and what did we see? five mares, one seagull over the bay, like a final arbiter of the last few months, a bell ringing in the face of winter, a bray, salt-crystallized gauntlet thrown into the trenches of the sea. the horses ninny and their manes are woven with the protein strands, nuclei of our earliest fathers tinged in the morning, falling over your face while you walk to me, your own silken hair, your ever-furrowed brow, hands that move so thoughtfully, slowly, reaching into my own face where wonder has sunk through my ribs like acid, corroding this calcified spirit , baring the hot phlegmy soul of me,

i look up to you and want to weave my own flesh through the calloused knit of yours, i want to, dismayed, shaking, trepidatious, sever the binds of my life for a simpler spell to relinquish to. i want to fall into the chalky soil of cymru's hills and find myself waking up in a net, every morning, a different fish thumping myself on the deck of different mariners, sea foam embalming me gently, so gently, carrying me to your bed, to your rocking chair in the corner, to the tomes of your library that i pretend to read while being incised by that hot lance to my breast over and over , and you tell me to keep going, so i will keep going, and i forget what it will be like to face any winter without a bell, without my forefather's nuclei-nutrition to wrap my fingers with while i heave over the floodplains with this celestial herd, hooves clamoring in every direction for leagues and leagues, we heave and cry and the carrions haul their song to the heavens with us, climbing into air and over the sludge of earth to our mountains, your mountains, a home i've never been to, a mother of brisker winds than my birth matron, a mother cutting me, stone, blood of mine making trail for the next riders, hewing ourselves in a slow trot to valleys green, melted ice and humid fruits gushing ardent, gushing like my side from these cliffs, spewing heat and sugars into vernal pools where we , seven thirsty mammals, will at last water ourselves.