The Package was first published in print by Poetry Quarterly.
The bedspread
has animal dialogs
It shudders and sweats
spreading its fretwork
across the cordillera
The smooth places are made
into mussels and rock crabs
and the hard places are made
into deer and antelope
Leather, pine and sea salt
join with resin and marsh hawks
to make the world we see
From scuffles under the window
comes the light above the hemline
and the occupation of Paris
and Lascaux cave art and the sphinx
tongue as thick as a buffalo
Painted stick dancers
clothed in blood and teeth
and ocher and foam
brought us today, delivered
in a Fedex package:
a dish of blue eels
and ammonites
and slave songs
and mile-deep diamonds
and the lungs of kings
Another fine poem! Everything is a package, a gift. Dogen says the whole earth is the gate of liberation but people are not willing to enter even if dragged.
thanks bro! I like the Dogen reference…maybe we are all liberated and don’t know it.