All Blue Things
I was once a chicken heart;
small, singing down the river
I was once a standing bear; twi
-light claws; rainbow salmon scales
I was once an aging man;
sat, watching them deliver
Our whole universe;
dark, backed into the soil
And one time when an old skin
had rotted blue on me,
I was a snake,
a night-time birch,
an elderly mother
of three sunk girls.
They were pink skin
and purple-seahorse curls
I was once the mastodon
in children’s crayon scrawls
Once the liver leaking bubble
on the knife and board,
or the feather fallen
onto Morecambe Bay