Wolf, Leopard, Falcon, Fawn Poem by Anthony Lawrence

For you there is more to the slow liquid dancing of my tongue
than working for sighs at the heart of your loins.

Each time I part the moist petals of the larkspur
and open the folds of the sealed spider orchid,

I drink the silver threads of your waters;
I float my own mouth across your swell.

Your taste is the spittle of timberwolves,
flecked with the blood of a wounded fawn;

your scent is a black leopard hunting the wind.
When I trace with my lips your flower's vein,

your breath startles in my hair like a small rare bird.
You open and close, hiding and blooming

like a scarlet sea anemone at my touch.
As I kneel before you, speaking in tongues,

my language is thick with the oil of you.
We are sacrificial, we are beautiful, our call

is the call of the Peregrine Falcon, and no matter what happens
from this moment to the next, there will always

be wild animals to which we can compare ourselves:
the wolf that leaves its shadow on the bed;

the leopard whose eyes have been cast in fire;
the sleeping fawn in a thicket of blood ...

And the falcon, riding an intricate wind, has woven
its accurate flight through the dreamscape of our room.

As I lift my head, it circles and screams, its wings fan over us,
and as we lose ourselves again

in the salty puzzle of our bodies, we listen, but the wind
and the falcon are far beyond our hearing.