Where The World Quickly Ends

Where the world quickly ends, there's a dock that sheds
For sake of my body or from the tumultuous water,
Which is everywhere, like the wolves (also everywhere).
Ducks make noises too, like distant mortar shells
Showering the cattails. A horse trots into the fog 
Curling gray and soft. Darkness hangs in the wings.

I'm only here now that I've stolen the wings
Of a vulture, what did you bring? The earth sheds
without a care for our contrariety. Speak before the fog
Bites its tongue and starts to bleed water!
Already the wetness has thinned the egg shells
Of the platypus. The rain retreats from nowhere.

What did you bring? Is it ivory? Up there
The skies are peeling from the madness of wings,
False as wallpaper plastered with ceramic shells.
The bison are frightened. Groundhogs groan and shed
Their long shadows, running for the mouth of the water,
Untraceable against the pervasive fog,

Which is the same slinking wall of fog
That's been roaming through folds of air.
Only the whales have no fear. They break the water
Noiseless as the shuffle of an owl's wings.
Bodies of mosquitoes are piling behind the shed.
I snatched the scales off an armadillo's shell,

What did you bring? If you lick a seashell,
You can taste salt and mercury. Lick the fog
And taste death. The jaguar cried when I shed
Its clever spots— I could be anywhere.
The dusk sails over with silent, tremulous wings,
And the clouds, finally emptied of water,

Have disappeared. In the cold mirror of the water
I see the moon encased in a starry shell.
The wolves staggered, drunk on the smell of wings,
And on their fleeting limbs they surrounded the fog.
My scales and spots were no help, they didn’t care.
The dock collapsed beneath murk and bloodshed.

The Earth’s water was quickly shed.
Stranded seashells form a silent prayer.
The globe rests in the wings of the fog.