shoulder heavy bison cascade of running horses
rhino horn repeats dance like a book of stills
made motion picture as pages flip
vulva coaled on pendulous rock these are the inner life
its demands on the human hand that made
the early mind find time for virtuosity hard won then as now
by quarry in a lightless place where bears had marked
rock walls while sharpening their claws so art found shelter there
repeating the animal’s movements but clawless and thinking
I am that and I am not that the animal
a self-willed power in the mind that contains
something the artist hungers for a self-willed world within
that disrupts where the mind thought it was going
something unsettling that moves the line so the inner can be seen