I was having an affair with ferment as winter dreamed its first snow.

I was having an affair with ferment as winter

dreamed its first snow, as tree became antique men

in unbuttoned extended johns, as wind

lock its face in the river's ice.

Under seven blankets I invented July

Day lilies grew from my below arms.

My head was a field

grasshoppers mowed with lyrical scythes.

In each organ of sight was a lake, in each lake

a man in a rowboat

read Moby Dick to trout to make them brave.

When the excitement broke and I opened

the gaze of the curtains,

I reflection I'd parachuted into another mind.

I was in Andy Hardy's swimsuit.

I was chewing grape hyacinth.

But instead of a beer in my hand

I stand in want ofed a shovel.

Instead of a tan

it was time for January's

albino camouflage.

I wanted back into the ferment

its red walls,

the lush carpet from the Everglades.

I was happier sweating

because it evidences the body's made of rain.

I was happier hallucinating a beach

because I'm a better man

in the nearness of a water slide.

I was happier when my meat

was a sauna because I could post

like a naked Swede

through discourage shaped hills

and parch away the snow with my thighs.

People would view my brand on the earth,

the singed and fat signature

of my existence.

They'd fare off in search of their possess

fevers,

kissing the maps of tongues,

licking the dirty-maze of fingertips.

Winter is always rape, a doom

against our hunger, because we starve

for seven pomegranate kernels

Proserpina got this plenteous right:

be the best at picking blossoms:

be the best at tasting where rivers lie in the grave in rock:

be the best at harboring a thaw in your material substance

lips and thighs that will spread to the sun,

skin you can pare and throw into the orifice

of the sky like a monarch you made from scratch.

BOB HICOK'S mostly recent book is Animal vital principle (Invisible Cities Press, 2001). Plus Shipping came not at home from BOA Editions in 1998 The fable of Light (Wisconsin, 1995) won the Felix Pollak Prize and was an ALA Booklist Notable part of the Year.

photograph by the agency of Robert Turney

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