CM Clark 
Lineage
What ant walk along the concrete casement
and where headed while the air warmed and fattened
with scent.
The dogged parade to the heart of sweet, the lilt
and call of crumbs and honey -- leftovers
from my jelly bread – inland
caravans determined and indefatigable, the sash
ledge, the wide flat world beyond the knitted screen,
where globed carved cheek rests
still to be intuited. Plateau of mica schist
and sludged concrete, knowing
only the call, a lure of crumbled candy.
I could follow that line forever, at least
until the rain stops. But the trekking
singlenoted step-like stitches
hem-basted brings the boiling water
stew pot, flushing their channel
crossing, like pepper pouring over winterbrick. Could
no crevices hide the last one, inverted
prometheus knot? The deep dreams, to hide
in the thunderheads, the wounds
of rain
unforecasted, languidly sanctioned. A simple
coexistence of my matter
and theirs
exoskeletal reminder of fragile snail lugging
shy cell on serious back. Serious
but feeling the weight, and urging
the sand to part
like so much red sea.
Sea-level
High in the oaks and the dogwood
Flattened hum of forest floor
Trading patches of last sun illumination
For shadowed day’s done.
Dusk’s brown sifts from stirred leaves pointing
The bear’s path to bird-feeder secreting corn flecks,
Unseeded sunflower.
Bowers break along the eloping claw tread
The gamey trek through rising breeze
Shifts the air’s scent, where tang of human meets
The wild fur, wet fang.
Foraging and farming crossing paths.
Mountain montage moues and mutates;
Unsettling vertigos of quick-change lift,
Lofty altitude. Huff and hunger for valley floor
Undoes the inner ear.
Out of my element, grazing the peaks --
Vistas too wide for scurrying astigmatism
Uncorrectable.
I shift my gaze to the hermit crab
Land-prone itinerant, borrowed baggage.
Craven and familial, we set our sights
At sea-level, where nothing wilder to sniff settles
Than an abandoned whelk,
A cracked conch
Waiting for the nearest wave
Or an outgoing tide.