Half an Hour

Hurt, hurtful, snake-charmed, struck white together half an hour we tear through the half-dark after some sweet core, under, over gravity, some white shore ... spin, hidden one,spin, trusted to me! laugh sore tooth sucked warm, sweet; sweet wine running cool through new dry shrewd turnings of my soul, opening veins. Gull-feathers beating, beating! Gliding. Still, sidelong eye ... wings beating like words against my eyes. And your eyes— o brother-animal, mild, terrible!—your eyes wait, have been waiting, knowing, unknowable, on that sky shore. A life is waiting. Its webbed hand reached out ... Trust me! truth- telling fish of the sky! your hand beyond my hand, your phosphorous trail broken, lost.