Animalia Terrestria
I set my feet
in the slow-moving, foliate river
and sometimes they are rich with brown oily fur
and sometimes their lime webs are sails that let in the dim sun
and sometimes they shine pebbled like black leather,
algae tangling my claws in curtained clouds
and sometimes
my terrible strong-tailed body drags behind
but usually I wear chitin,
a skin that still articulates
warm shallows first flushed with oxygen
the multiplicate bones of the jaw, dividing
into a way of breathing
into a way of hearing
a way of stromatolites and giant ferns
into a way of soft, naked, heel-down feet
whose flat nails cannot remember beyond trees.
I have never flown; just now the stars
that have always been there
begin to blink for me
between the moss-hoared cypresses.