The wadded sheet calls
as it is yanked above my head, a coyote cub shriek,
pressed in gray cotton
this is the hour I beg for
sleep, to stay
asleep though I am awake
the sheet screaming
my spine a needle stood
in the center of the center ring
of our transplant peach tree
it is so quiet in here
the place no one remembers
but remember the amber juice of her several hearts?
Lain at her trunk?
A thousand wooden labyrinths for the red ant
or just a pile of pits
stripped between coyote molars
feast of August, their scream
a sheet in the wind
returns to the pits in December
where I have buried my daughter’s placenta
the meaty, velvet meeting
place of our quiet remembering
our juicy pillow preserved
in the earth now, asleep with the snakeweed,
the mountain potato,
belonged to earth and sky
fragrant umbilicus which signs the wind
in gentle curls and enters the snout
of some coyote who remembers
the path to the peaches
who comes and nuzzles her face
beneath a mound of jagged pits
who shakes the dirt, so carefully, loose
and presses her lips down
into the juice of us, trickling
towards secret roots
with secret mouths
tiny mouths
that swirl and swallow our blood, up
where it floods
the center of the center ring
and we remember
baby girl, we are in the voice of this tree now,
carried over every cracked stone
and Oak moon arroyo
our blood, our fleshy morendo,
draped
in the mouth of the dog.