New work

"Then come close to Nature."
- Rilke


At the breast of Nature
driven to the Metaphysic milk
like an infant rooting

And the mantra of art
the unalloyed Idea

is: Reinterpret.
Learn to harrow

steal the plow

dig the axe out the woodshed

and put it to the oak-

let the iron, old and primal,

shake off its rust

in the gash, in the wedge

She bears now-

in the sap, the pus, the colostrum.

It's not so much a matter of thought,

experience is later.

At the breast of Nature

we intuit:

our toothless mouths

nip at her tits

and the imprint comes

through the throat.

But a gosling

can know a shoe as Mother:

they'll fly, fully grown, in formation,

behind a glider

hoisting a man

wearing just those magical shoes.

And to suck the sap

of the world tree

requires an open wound.

So we go to the past

and dig around

and find a file, a bit of steel,

and make for ourselves some fangs.

acquiring, before we're christened,

a name:

Nidhog,

the Poet Serpent,

teeth stuck tight in the breast.