John Davis

 The Traveler Inhabits the Pack

 

I walk with dogs into the canyon of snow.

I ride inside their fur, become bits of ice.

These are the dogs who danced on the ribs of the earth.

These are the dogs who cried low moans

of the wind up north.

These are the dogs who burrowed in snow and licked

their dewclaws until the moon rose.

These are the dogs who ran through my lungs, kidneys,

heart, ran off the edge of the horizon,

ran from the sunset where lava was stirring.

 

I am running with the dogs until there are enough stars

inside me to light the night’s path home.

My days are growing warmer within the hoarfrost.

I am becoming the northern shadow moving on all fours.

 

When did I become the breathing inside a long scarlet tongue?

When did my withers warm the edges of a snowbank?

When did my blood begin to stain the glacial snow

1000 years old?

When did the dark spots on my flanks become ice melting?

 

We are running and turning the earth the way a hamster

runs and turns the earth inside his cage.

As we run our legs whisper against the snow.

The sound is recalling the first voices of the earth

and how mothers struggled

birthing the mountains, the sea, the layers of air.

 

The ghosts of our ancestors are rattling their bones,

keeping time with our running, tapping the rhythm

of the snowy egret’s wings. And the rhythm cannot stop.

The lava is running out of the talus and scree

 

into our blood into our hearts up through the roots

wanting water up through streams and frozen waterfalls.

It keeps on rising keeps on layering the sky around us

which is the skin of the earth and we howl back

until the stars inside us begin to warm the moon.

John Davis is the author of Gigs, Guard the Dead and The Reservist. His work has appeared in DMQ Review, Iron Horse Literary Review and Terrain.org. He lives on an island in the Salish Sea and performs in several bands.