LEDGER

Walking in the chaste cold of the mountain, humored in a fir perfume, bonely tone of small things fracturing beneath my boots, I’m at once accountable. What I did and didn’t. What I shared and kept. The debit is recorded on the paper of my flesh. But I can’t account for this brass horn whose bell now spires from my breast, caroling to every unseen creature witness.

SHRIFT 

I miss the lonely taste of my mother’s milk
Those loaded Saturdays ironing her silks
Drunk on the light pouring out of the house
Drunk on a kite … can I touch heaven? 

I never gave consent to be circumcised
I’ll never fly a plane, got my father’s eyes
Dead pioneers keep my heart on the plains
Seven more years and I’ll be joining them 

I ride my motorcycle through a mountain range
Consult the wildlife, working through my pain
Animal eyes hold no judgment for me
An animal dies … do you hear him singing?

A FEELING 

Today I saw a horse in pain. 
There was nothing I could do.
There was something I could do,
but to do it would mean something
I’m uncertain I’m prepared to mean. 

And so I kept on winding 
up the blushing canyon throat. 

Who am I to see that glassine
look of distance in a creature’s
eye and call it pain? 

Who am I to see a horse and want
but to ride unsaddled on her back
toward the green shine of my fortune?

Lamb is an American writer.