Lost Time for Rose

Let shiny black go with her belly
marked red in a field of broken
grave stones. Forgot to say, “I let
you go; tell your family—Theridiidae—
not to bite my family—XX, XY, XY—
ridge east of the North Canadian.”

Out of the glass jar, her legs swarmed
like cilia in the lungs
to try on a mantle of fresh air.

I let her go, untamed. Some things beyond
domesticity. Like REM sleep.

Animals move through. Desecrated 8 mm
rewound and played again, with
stutters and gaps: a niece humming
jazz standards and I ride the mare,
dogs sicced on us by ________?,
and lizards witness with hidden eyes.
All strangely Celluloid, flat
on the screen of the mind rigged high
above the slumbering body.

My trainer’s gone. I’m a lonely animal
on this swarming planet, with a den
of children, with visitors, but without
a trainer, the heart cannot see right.

Time to train me myself for the difficult
recognition of this family—this consciousness—

of light. Or time to run an advert: Trainer
wanted, third planet from the sun.