By Instinct

The wind tells me who is coming,

the water tells me where to go;

the sun tells me when to wake.

Behind the lids of your beady eyes, you take measurements,

you make reasons and excuses.

You tell yourself stories about being the hero

you

man

My blood tells me the relationship of relations,

both yours and mine, our whole history in a single sniff;

and my blood is alive with aversion, pulling away

from the ground, breaking into a run.

I am full of speed and warmth and confidence, and suspicion.

You are suspicious too, of me, of my confidence,

that I know I belong is what you are afraid of.

You try to contain the uncontrollable with utterances,

naming, pinning down, dissecting first with

language and then with tools.

My eyes roll forward and I wake from a dream,

where darkness died on a table in front of me;

and from the darkness a child was born.

A new thing pushed its way into the world through my dream.

***

I balance the yellow pillow against the faded gold

of my old dog's back and sigh.

Pine wood planks vault the ceiling; I am part bee, I say,

because I have dressed my dinner in honey.

She licks the back of the couch and in between my fingers,

and we move closer because outside

it’s damp and cold; and there is still so much darkness.

She is my sunburst solar flare with a fiery temper

that rises when she feels threatened or misunderstood.

Between us we find a rhythm of doing and being,

consuming, resting, and creating, and we’ve moved

like this for 11 years and who knows how many more.

I did try to give her a name but then I unnamed her,

and removed her bindings and gave her agency;

and choices and in that way we both became wilder.