Tonight, falling rain,
I pricked my hand on the hedge. A bare
branch pricked me,
a knotted skeleton, dark-reaching
haunt-night excursion
out of the earth-darkness.
– I fling it
off me in despair! Death, death
follows me everywhere.
Underground currents rushing on
like black swirls cycloning my feet,
the dark, dark rain beating down, slipping on
us like underworld dawn.
And earth balled up
a tiny bug into its shell,
while death sinks on and the damp
rain of the underswell
swells on us
swirling about our feet down the drains
of the earth. The drains, down
drains of cowering life, on down
through the daytime swills of our life,
holding out like a sparkler not yet died.
Drain underground.
Underswill.
Black undersparkle of the gutter.
Down
the rubble down, washing
down, draining out
into the deep deep pipes of the earth, into
the hollow
roots
of pre-life and dark.
Like the siege of lightning in the storm.
