They think I’m uninhabited,
having settled me
into this zippered coffin,
but I wait, because soon I know
all will be released
out of this darkness
so like the desert night –
the saguaros dumb giants
reaching eager for the sky
with both hands.
The owls perched half inside them
with those eyes like dry wells,
as if all the stars are never enough.
Starving for light.
What did the elders say
they were? Guides?
 
And the yelp
of the coyote morphing
into an infant’s cry, filled
with such longing, I wondered
what country I’d stepped into.
Even this machine in the shape
of a room seems to murmur
lonesome, so made in the image of man,
it too breathes sorrow.
But I, I am already leaving.
Can’t hardly hear it anymore.