no answer from sand, quartz, or air,
their shattery, dissolving jazz.
none from clouds,
their addictive white thighs.
stones spew ochre
as i kick, as i watch a cactus
cry puzzled flowers away
frond by frond
into a pitcher of shadow.

i see now
this piracy we call time,
long spider whose legs never touch,
has no poison,
not even microbes, not even flesh,
nothing except a bitter fluid in the mind.

nothing should die
without sending its heat into a
na�ve sunset. why must perfect mice
fracture off rattlesnake swords,
suffer a billion times,
as many times as there are daughters?



�2006 by Chris Crittenden
~Originally Published in Porcupine