Science  Write  Now

These days, the fingers of a diagnosis 

                             blanch with welter, blue with 

weather I don’t say, not aloud, not 

                             within spitting distance of anyone. 

These devious days are sunburn in the mouth, 

                             eye crackles. These days in disguise lean me 

               into vertigo, tender  

                             tendon to bone with me. 

                This yelp-year’s skin tingles 

in fog-blotch to blood-buzz, 

       and lack-hackles of imagination  

                are too much 

                           light and shivering. 

Something inside’s 

                           too vigilant. 

Something inside’s 

                            mistaken itself for something else. 

Wolves see each other seeing. 

                          Wolves plan ahead.                 They posture, they play. 

Leave me be—I’m thinking-thinking-thinking, 

                         dog-tired, these dire wolf days. 

        I’m howling harmonics 

to the yap-edge of a universe of elk

                        —not in warning but wiling time 

and wanting not this exactly          but something  

                               to be true.