John Kinsella

for Barbara York Main

Beneath sheets of cauterised stone,
feldspar gleams shooting off,
chip-size predators pause. Pincers
poised as if in shock,

a trick to lure stocks
of creatures they might
feed off. To lift a flake
and expose the sun,

to understand their modus
operandi, the wiring
of souls that avoid
the light, the lie

of the land within their bodies.
At Yorkrakine rock
the real is shadowed,
the wedge-tail hovers

far off to hone the light.
Predating, satiating the envelopes
of our own bodies,
picturing with compound eyes

denuded vegetation, rock dragons,
brine shrimp dried to dust,
fragmented amongst their eggs
in the dried out indentations,

the pools that aren't holes,
the poisons we imagine,
cock-a-hoop, ready to strike
targets we can't see

through all about
the oceans of wheat,
grain suffering just enough
to yield both weight and protein.