Meeting the Angel, Tasting What It Sees III Poem by Tim Lilburn

Ten yards of moonless hair herniate inside the cruciform

hummingbird, then well from its green belly.

And inside you, Enkidu, ibex-nosed, streamchested, the Friend,

midden-pong, satanically muscled, tips,

stilting on a column of erasures and forgettings.

Inside you, Enkidu, his hospital pudding legs, the shoulders

with forest dark and seal stares copulated right out of them.

One deer, its side sawed away, Kawasaki-leaning close to rock over dry leaves

through bramble, slants toward this caving to salt the damp of tremor out

of it, so that it can glide-collapse, engine off

in radio silence, into the siphoning ear of this angel, this

one, a drinking under the skin, this one, which has come, its

tongue blood-glued hummingbird feathers,

its hand, dried, sutured, rattling flint sparks of individuation.