The Dung Pile
Timothy Kercher

What you have become is a web
of what was once alive, a fire-
net like the mind’s tubes, stacked
on & within yourself like bricks,
a trapezoid-engine idling, scat
hieroglyphs that tell a story
of water, cattle, earth, migrations
& the endless cycles of rain,
soil, seedlings, shit—so much
like a poem. You wait, stacked & snow-
covered, for those who collected
you to collect you again—
to fill arms in sub-zero
temperatures; you brave the snow
by the way you were re-wet
& smeared as a shell
to protect yourself—
you wait to be brought
to the center hearth
of a stone house &
laid at the foot of fire—
your destiny, to burn
a hole in the winter months.

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