The Mild

The Mild You had almost forgotten these animals: their see-through eyelids. They look at you and ammonia fills the room. You owe them nothing. The long blue snouts at the window, inquiring tongues. Where is your notebook, write this down. They stare. You feel yourself bent over the table, your hair white: the animals slowly turn away and begin adorning themselves with sprigs of wigelia. They sit like bears, fish wriggling in their paws. You didn't know they had hungers. You write, of course. Now the animals are mounting your abandoned car, whimpering and pumping their eager hips. You write, stop, but all they do is lick each other's eyes. Your notebook becomes a blur, you smell dark plums, the rank odor of wet fur. You begin naming the shapes of their tracks : foliate, lovely. You see their flanks gleaming in the river. You feel the ache of what it means to know them. You close your eyes and stare through your lids at flat fields of snow. The animals gone into the woods & gone their prints as they make them. JOHN ALLMAN ...