Fertile isn't the right word, but it grows
an arm, or a tooth, leftovers from the night
before. An engagement of knives and forks
sawing through marrow and bone.
What's left once you've picked off the meat?
Fragile is the right word, coursing through the vein
like a pin-prick, puncturing a pulsing crevice,
a shadowy stench of tomorrow's morning,
the aftertaste a memory on your throat.
Can night grow from an infant seed?
You can dismiss the rattling of empty
pipes, a letter-box painted hollow
by routine checks, green from a summer
that's long passed, inches in the grass.
Those inches wrap around the skull.
The summer moths come home, tucked
like sprouts in crumbled soil, swung around
the frame, a canopy of parts.
The tendon, the wing, the spoon.