Animals are good to think with.
—Claude Lévi-Strauss
I want to regress to the old way of thought,
not a mode, but a graveled road, a path out
of reason. I want to invest in a vestigial tail
that wraps my fat ankle like the very manacle
of leaving. I want to maul the idea of progress,
claw it to ribbons and leave it
on your back step—I love you that much.
Don’t you see? My rainbow trout cascade
like your dementia; my grasshoppers flit
through acres and acres
of shedding skin. Like my pheasants in fall,
grief flushes, and you, restive in sleep,
chew your own tongue. Don’t you see?
I want to gallop backward onto the stage
of evolution, scamper up its curtains, look down
unafraid, then plunge after anything
that gleams. I want to unfold the folds
in my brain until my eyes reflect light
and darkness (what you left) seems not unnamable,
but unnamed to begin with.