He mouths a left-over thigh,
whines a new path in the grass, tries
to tell himself about bone, tongue-licking
the marrow to taste of the once-living.
I did not know his jaws would open-close
five times, miming news so old, nerves quiver
to announce the victim is dead. For now, he is
young, lapping each moment without fear.
By evening, forgets the burial bone, runs the street.
Shadow of metal falls, a stranger summons me,
the undertaker, for blood, warm in cupped-hands.
Jaws open-close five times, as if miming something
in stunned silence of the brain, needing neither Plato
nor the gut-reaction of a worm to know death dissolves
even bone when sun-moon have bared themselves,
to turn love to dust. I carried his dried blood on boots
until cells turned as brown as leather which encased
my feet– two museum mummies whose speech
is frozen on wrappers in glyphs I cannot read
to save myself from the same task of scribing death.
Jaws open-close five times as if miming something
between brothers of different blood codes–
to confound Morse in a dot-dash world, the way death
taps the shoulder to inform us finally, we have both
moved in the length of one day beyond all language.
