єдиноріг

Bound as a moonward braid, the horn sprouting
from its dream point on the horses fore

head, glistening pink as jelly my insides
rhythmed on her bare back—who dreamt

of you cantering through twilight’s lilac
filmed forest—who dreamt of you swinging your magnificent

head in a loose figure 8, who has let your mane fall through
kind fingers, placed their palm to feel the drumming blood

so sure of itself beneath your meaty chest—
Should I guide us to a lake where cool water can clasp

the clogs of mud clustering your fine belly hairs?
Should I lead you where willow leaves quiver in your whinny,

or to a cliff above churning ocean to mist your black
eyes? And I stood quietly behind

could hear a paean of waves
erupting velvet over rock

catch sight of your mane swept up
by each gust which strips

the whole earth back
to sky— your gentle lids ascent—

I could see you blessed
in nothing so thinly bright

as wind, swarming around
your bristled body rooting

its hoof tips in the bluff thick with gray
gull song and prophecy twisted in, prophecy

reflecting off the backs of fish, in iridescent glints shining on
whale eye and unleashed through the blow

as breath again the Magic
that is throbbing here permeates all

my densities which in this kind of death
would anyway depart like dawn’s steam

from my bark encrusted core, transmute all
selves which, bless them, walled me for protection

but bound and bridled in the caked gut of a stall
gnawing the foamed bit, its okay if you yank as I offer

my hand, here, with a carrot, my other hand searching

for the rope to untie— for before you were winged
and crowned by the half Moon with her fluttering cleft

your gaping, velvet nostrils widened
for wind, your cradled eyes were still as obsidian,

your new lips flapped for the swollen nipple
as you wobbled to follow the warm Truth

of your mother’s underbelly into a pen
where her amber neck was bowed and her muzzle was tearing

tufts of green threads bulged from the Earth’s worming skin
gathering beads of dew to bind the still-dark bird songs

into each glistening matrix, where once a mare and foal meandered in the safety
of a pen— but now it is you

and I surrendered in what I cannot fathom
is next; please, dwell us deeply in

the whole heart, its meaty whorl
crimson and flushing, let us bide here, where

blood floods like dawn splashing through
taproot to tip, core to skin, made of it

swallowed in it, untethered and belonging
in it; suddenly you are

the unicorn I
will not capture, but Loving

like this is a song, you
can hear it through the walls, your cells

perk for it, your body remembers
with the embryonic throat which hollowed itself

to carry your voice, bareback and wombed
these spaces inside of you still echoing

the drumming trot, dismounted now
and opening the pen, with a guiding palm sweeping forward

her whiskered and velveteen bottom lip, beneath your britches
the whole ride

scribed in welted
glyphs between your legs.