A gecko slips under the fold
where cushion meets cushion on an old
corded sofa perfect for reading
and as I read I half-expect a flurry
of fine lizard feet on ankles, bookish
hands or neck, yet what happens next
is even finer: that portal latched to darkness
swings on webs which humming-
birds collect inside my chest,
where starlings build their crystal nests
out of their own saliva. Here I rest,
spanned by bats and ropes of notes
that plant the singing egg in each to
each: a thousand airborne nests
the size of human baby-hearts
in utero rapidly pumping. But then,
and here’s the hook, I read how
these caves, once discovered, soon
descend into the sending of children up
for bird-egg soup collected in a sack
sold on the black market for some
outrageous sum by the tonne,
enough to build cathedrals
in the mouth of darkness, and yet
prairie owls coat their doorsteps
with simple dung, and dung beetles
become a walking larder, rolling
their own cocoa-coated eggs away
and I think of the bamboo rat who
harvests the freshening shoot by pulling on
a ceiling root and hauling underground
the ripening stalk for later. How a poem
should be no less a bean
the handy size of a small grenade
gnawed by teeth packed with stardust
and the stealth of dung stowed in
careful cosmic caves inside the heart
grown mutinous, resistance swarming
into life with the pin pulled out
already bursting into flower.