You lift skin.
Peel back watered hollows.
Tear up birds’ brush wet land.
Suck and scrape.
My boreal, my bog, my peat, my muskeg.
Spit and chew my fine skin.
But I am compressor of sediment, viser of sea bed, mistress of fossil.
I ooze slow
sink under
slip sticky black between sand.
You alchemy
bitumen into oil barrel.
Shoot hot water
cut siphon slush
slurry my broken matter.
Trap me
in tanks and tailing ponds.
Split me apart. Spit me
into silver Athabasca.
Bring your big diggers.
Your mappers, your prodders.
Your seven-storey shovelers
your hundred-ton trucks
your conveyer belts and drums
your pipes and your lines.
Bring your coffee break to my eon,
your night shift to my star gaze.
I boom beyond shifting gears and lit engines.
I am the night ring in eardrum,
my voice still beating.
My bone marrow biopsy.
The length of the needle’s shaft
as it sunk through the thin skin
of light
into the water
and down to sea floor.
Through
muck and mud
sand and clay
stone and shale.
The crack
against cap rock.
Face down. Covered.
A sterile blue barrier
a square hole cut
centered above the small of my back.
My stomach sweaty
and stuck to the soft tissue
torn paper. Each hand
gripping the edge of the table.
I breathed out
a trade wind, a gulf stream, a North Sea storm.
Below
a hollow needle punctured bone
a barbed drill spun
a syringe sucked
all manner of molecules and marrow up.
I moaned so low my hands shook with vibration
and something slipped into the dark sea.
What became of the green blush of algae, the jellyfish’s perfect pulse?
all manner of hydrocarbons and thrombocytes up.
See Connections ⤴