Hounds

[xyroph]

He said Nothing grows here,
as we climbed the path around Angel Island,
weaving like a circlet around its crest. The bay below,
disguising its depth in glitter, was ready
to catch me nonetheless.
 
Against his complaint, I felt the summer oak, the rattlesnake grass
assuring me of their fertility. I couldn’t bring myself
to hold his hand.
 
I’d never believed in evil. I believed 
in the hurt and the hungry, that a dog bites when it’s afraid.
Until I felt his fingers dig into my arm
and for some insult I’d never intended, felt in his grip
his palpable need to salt every inch
of my earth by hand-- felt a surging terror 
of the oak thicket and brush as he guided me.
An impulse to shout a warning to the birds there
that a dog was coming to crown himself in the snow
of their feathers, and that he was not mine.
 
I resisted, for the first time, so quietly, being
dragged into those summer woods like an easy kill,
a waste of his good will.
I wasn’t always this small.
In those slavering jaws, making promises to the next man, that I’d love him
if he hurt me the least.