How far it’s come, epochs
and continents. Before man
deified the lightning’s fire,
its tuba heart had clunked
from the cage of its body.
Before mother clasped infant,
on guard against the tall grass
transformed by night,
it shit great cairns, humped,
they think, some clumsy way.
Now we travel hours
to gather round its bones
and sense how something’s changing
in the air, under those same stars
that now, like it, we’ve named.
David O’Connell’s work has appeared in The Cincinnati Review, New Ohio Review, Copper Nickel, Sugar House, and North American Review, among other journals. His first full-length collection, Our Best Defense, is forthcoming from Červená Barva Press.
