when crocodiles eat the sun

when crocodiles eat the sun

this pit beneath my hands grows cool, the sand

full of damp promise for my hollow reed,

with which i suck sweet water into an ostrich shell.

here, in the scanty shade of thorns, i temper my spear

with fire and smear the point with poison

as it has been forever done.

in the night we dance and enter the trance

that reins the boiling energy within our hearts

and expels the star sickness from our clan,

the disease of the harsh emotions, the anger

and the jealousy, the failure to give correctly, gone.

when jupiter, dawn's heart burns before the sunrise

on this day when a crocodile will eat the sun,

i return from riding the back of the roaring beast,

the spotted one who leaps from trees to slash the hartebeest.

i awake to see the california schoolyard field around me,

the pit on the pitcher's mound dug by cleated toes,

the sun in the jaws of a toothless cloud.

no crocodiles, no spears, no magic.

just a boy, playing with a stick.

my days are full of ring neck snakes and scorpions.

i run through creeks and climb the crowns of oaks

watching turkey vultures soar.

with visions drained from comic books, where

two kiowa warriors emerge from carlsbad caverns

into a lost valley where dinosaurs still roam

and i see myself straddling a pterosaur, her wings

spread like a fighter plane. we dive we bank

we dogfight snoopy in his sopwith camel

circling round the eiffel tower, we buzz the sidewalk tables

along the champs elysee and flirt with the gargoyles

perched on notre dame. my flying girl is strong,

she flexes between my legs, carries us to the cottony clouds

then she folds her wings and we fall, breathless,

to the silvery river that ribbons through the city,

we dash under the bridges just above the water and the barges

full of diners and tourists gaping at our acrobatics.

the lazy afternoon is waning, claiming the warmth from this

sandbank beside the creek where i'm digging with a kitchen spoon

and find a spearpoint.  a real one. not some whimsy from dell comics,

it's black volcanic glass as crisp and sharp as the day it was flaked by some

long gone miwok hunter. i wonder. what was his name?

did he have a son like me? whose days were full of ringneck snakes

and scorpions and climbing to the crowns of oaks

to dream of flying above the valley and the village until

his mother called him. come home, it's time for dinner.