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Get a copy of this writing in the Mark Fleury 2017 poetry book the Eight Wheeled Doorway of Serpent’s Head on line:

Because a Joint

Mark Fleury

Because a joint
Has both an orange-lit tip
And is the colors of night, like fall leaves
Under the earth’s red and yellow sky

That structures the pigsty that bleeds
Its cradle across my feet

And ankles, I see it through
A lens that belongs not only to a camera

But is also a compass
And a prism that drains me

Of my greed. Claws
Could do no better. Even if the cat,
Black as night hail, has a howl that tells me
That I can’t have my own name

To reach the sunlight, where all rivers
Have the same eastern address, and love,
Like the joint tip, are the rocks, visible

Through the water’s currenting, sparkling,
And spread their legs open like eggs
With lightning cracks and wings of waves.

And the closer the brokenness
And emptiness of the shells
Get to the exposure and openness
As the heart of rhythm, the more

Jewels and nakedness are on every tide’s
Oceanic love for the shore.
This opening includes the night.

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