Dream Sequence

Cold and bright
this first official day of your life
with the worms.
Just after dawn
with racing grey scuds overhead
you said you would get the paper;
I knew you were dead.

Two paste-brown horses
nose their curious heads.
Up from the grave comes your shout
like a stab, Hup! Hey!
They wheel and bob through the grass.

Do worms eat us?
I run out of a ramshackle house.
Five baby quail on a rock;
one has an ant in its beak
as big as a marble.
The ant is digging a hole
down its throat.
One has a crack in its back.
I know it’s empty inside.
I throw it away and out pops
a soldier crab — a milky ceramic blue.