Grant Cochrane

The Entire

basking under astral beams the sorrel glistens
hears the pounding universe of sinew nerve and
corpuscle plants banks rears rotates a musty
atmosphere awaits with husky bait the answering call

chafing at the crust of ever sense of wind and
temperature gramineous hairs on end stand proud
on axis pulses plunge the ice baths tumbling
brushes off the dampening drift          and calls again

unheeded          the stranded melancholic swish
of fiery tail excrescent surface folding into
deep concentric furrows bowed and blown
a dying star’s unwished wont to stand alone

My Lowered Eyes

caged beyond memory
philosophically celibate
a thousand eyes, yet another thousand
make quizzical love to the silverback

fingers leaf through incongruous
shyness: such an inadequate word
ephemeral bubbles of aesthesia
surface and float and noiselessly peter

until the bridge of gentle Chiron
is but a wooden cantilever
projecting precarious images
of the failed and the fallen

in their wake
his sanguine Sagittarian offspring
their barbs nicely pointed
play the planet so boldly

one can only withdraw
and revert to the comfort of canines