skin – other animals

where the skin grows thin a sharp moon pokes through bare branches

(First published in Heliosparrow.)

when you tried to kiss that star and fell haltingly down to an earth full of vole tracks and pebbles left from the unending work of burrows your mouth burnt but with the promise of new tender skin you walk on

my skin stretches to meet itself over the ice caps

April

quiet the new green
stretches gropes

later blisters on the skin

but knows already
what it will

it starts to itch and

one drop clings
to the leaf the ground
takes it all in and

that dog

looking thin like the well
inside me that well

you know

because it gets under your skin and the others have left

waves break beneath my skin the beginning of fire

thin white skin of rain the puzzle back in the drawer