Mammalian

 

Mammalian

 

Settled, calcification sore, I doze,

no longer the moving target.

No crosshairs on my back, my chest.

 

Migration no longer flows within

without some force, some warm draw,

some sound like spring. Promise.

 

A breeze I no longer feel, the slow dawn.

Mammalian drive to nestle,

the reason less important than the act.

 

The smell of earth after a thaw,

after rain, after tilling,

can tempt me to stir, to leave my den,

 

but the voices I meet shy me back in,

in to curl once again to sleep,

soon waking only for the dreamed familiar.

 

Michael A. Griffith

 

Michael A. Griffith teaches at Raritan Valley and Mercer County Community Colleges in central NJ. He is the author of three chapbooks of poetry, Bloodline; Exposed; and New Paths to Eden. Two of these, Bloodline and Exposed, are available in eBook format from Soma Publishing. Mike facilitates a monthly poetry workshop for the Princeton Public Library and is a board member of the Delaware Valley Poets/US 1 Poets. Recent work appears in Ariel Chart, Haiku Journal, Kelsey Review, North of Oxford, Page & Spine, and the anthology book Floored