I dreamed I rode on horseback through
a smaller version of the world
seeking some treasure that my clan had lost.
 
Upon my return the clan-house was fallen.
Grey rivers ran down
the matriarch’s wrinkled cheeks
 
—as the desert rock
must give the healing fluid, touched by
the stammerer’s writhing rod—
 
O she had seen, from the rubble’s porch,
the pigmy panting, scratching the sand
of the abandoned shore.
 
I’ve heard of words becoming flesh, to nag
a world devoid of ears, but had never tried
to give belief to it…
 
She raised her hands, fingers like a garden fork
thin and incomplete. She said the words
that wrap my tail-bone now, even as I wake.