A bird is flying
into the open mouth of evening
while our thoughts
crawl on their low bellies.
Even leaves are tongues.
Then a moon rises
inside this skull
of sky, the way a snake
can’t decide
if it is paper skin
or living form.
And if the moon claims
the world as its first thought,
as the primitive heart
I saw yesterday dangling
like a fist
from a tomato plant,
then the black water
of our bodies spreads
across the field
after so much rain,
full with thunderstorms
of temper and bad spirits.
Then a hoot owl’s voice
presses through screen
mesh when I awake empty
to this bed. Surely our moon
is a wagon stalled
in a great prairie sea.
Surely it rolled out
from a thousand acres
of ribs and flesh,
to pause its ghostly heart
between beats.
Doug Ramspeck is the author of four poetry collections, the most recent of which, Mechanical Fireflies (2011), won the Barrow Street Press Book Prize. His first book, Black Tupelo Country (2009), was awarded the John Ciardi Prize. His poems have appeared in Slate, AGNI, The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, The Georgia Review, and elsewhere. In 2009 he received an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award. He directs the Writing Center and teaches creative writing at The Ohio State University at Lima. (updated 5/2013)