Fear Of
its poisoned bite would leave us quadriplegic
of snakes’ and alligators’ reptile slither
would have us grow scales writhing in swampy manic
of hurricanes, of forest fires’ rapture
of roofs torn off, of flame-now, no thereafter.
Fear is something else we haven’t noticed
a patient something we need prompting for,
urgency of small things pretending huge
dream-sized for us whose red-flag rage
at being broadened overturns a calm
of literality, a sleep we mistake
for waking we feel kept by, yet as otherness
we’d unlearn, keep to stillness once we sense its heft.
The Dog Star 
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