FEVER

FEVER

FEVER

Blame yourself when you wake shaking the bed:
melancholic, wet & menaced by chairs;
the pulse in your temple a shutter in storms.
There’s only you to blame for skipping your pills
for traveling the damp side of high roads at dusk:
you who went deep into the green rice fields
& into the realm of the fields’ winged queens.
So there was a heron that covered the sun.
So there were frogs & a ribbon-bright snake.
Maybe you wanted to drift this backwater
remote & oarless in the tangled shade.
Now every night your sheets are a river
& the song of the winnower sung in your bones.