John Burnside - Totem

[bohemiabythesea]

John Burnside
VI   TOTEM

Only a moth at the glass,
or so it seems,
the animals further away
and indistinct,

wolverine
hitched to your skin
and the dreamed
coyote.

All night they ran in the woods,
till they came to this line
of fence-wire
and poisoned gravel,

desert
behind them,
prairie grass
burning for miles,

salt-flats
and rivers,
birch woods,
an ocean of stars,

but nothing there
to match
this baffled
sleep,

first light gilding the door
like a wayward angel,
day-lilies silvered with rain
in our picturesque yard.

(from: John Burnside, Gift Songs, London: Cape Poetry, 2007.)