Clade Song 15

The Ruminant’s Psalm

the goat
in the field—
                tethered
to a rust-bent T-post
by twine
and the memory
of a fence
has torn
a page
from The Sickness unto Death
       (a wind caught it—
           or grace)
& now
it chews
      not with hunger
      but with
            capacity
      four stomachs
        to take
        what cannot
           be held
at once
each bolus
returns
     as thought
     as foam
     as half-digested
     “despair
          is the misrelation”
the mouth works
the words
     loose
from their syntax
and swallows
     again
       and again
until meaning
ferments
in the rumen
a theology
of gas
and muscular
              backflow
this
is how
the knowing body
prays
not upward
but downward
into folds
of anaerobic
           silence