Songs of the Scorpion
(excerpt)

To My Children

Eight legs on the ground, 

                   I carry you on my back—

tiny lobsters that swim through desert air. 

When did we decide to leave the sea? When

could we breathe? 

                           The wind is my only lover 

now that your father is gone. And I feel so close to the earth, 

the ground, so close, 

                           so close to the wind.

                                                 How we danced the night we made you, 

                       he moved me around under a tree, pushed

with his pincers, his mouth

                                            —with his tail he came for my body. 

                  Had he always been prey? 

When it was over, I pierced him twice

              no—three times,

assessed his body, considered it possible food. 

                                       I had no appetite for his heart.

Let him remain, I said to the wind. 

                          Let him be an incremental deflation,

               a slow flattening against the horizon. 

Let him come so close to the earth 

                                 there is no longer difference between them. 

Will I too assimilate—make of this body the

                      burial-in-waiting it has always been?

                We are one step away from being crushed

    to dust, 

           from rolling away with the wind.  

                                            Stay on my back, little ones. 

                      I will try to keep my mouth 

from being a monster.