Photo by Pablo Heimplatz. Creative Commons.
For 14 years I carried
Two heavy globes of meat,
No toothsome peaches or
Swelling melons, no jugs
Of sweet milk or brass rings
You could knock to be let in.
Unrelenting dogs followed me,
Wet-jawed and hungry, hunting
Strong meat in weak flesh,
Blind to the birds in the trees
Or fields of titmice, noses only
For the boar in the thicket.
The weight split my spine,
Tore my muscles, hacked my head
To shards. I festered in darkness
And saw stars, wept while
Hardy vines cut furrows
Into my inadequate shoulders.
So I lay on Anubis' slab,
That head of all jackals,
Made a deal: I gave him eight
Pounds of flesh, he called
The dogs from my shadow.
I would never see his kind again.
Now my rosebuds bend lightly
Within the green vale, small
Matters swelling with the need
To feed tiny mouths, invisible
To the flesh-starved animals
Whose jaws now slaver elsewhere.