a delicate snake skin gently slides
through the warmest grassy land
earth bound children greet the day
with sacred laughter and with cries.

i see none of this: none of it
do you realize.
neither am i sleeping,
nor are you alive.

our veins now are goldfish roads
and the lakes are the home
of all that is dignified
passionate symbols there abide.
an effigy of the face of god
sputters deflected in our blood
-and the summer is a beast, and
the day bends embodied
inside me like a summer's ghost-.