Maybe the splintered stick teaches the lesson,
maybe it's the snapping turtle's open maw,
maybe it's the show of thumb gone to that thresher,
finger to the hatchet block, knuckle to the saw.
Maybe it's the creature dead on the chicken coop
while we stoke the fire and watch water boil
or the man who shows us how the jaws,
though sour with death, are still sprung to fall.
No, stripped to our underwear, waist-deep
in the canal, it's the foot against the shell
that sets the truth like a fisherman's hook,
quickly in—too sheer and shining to dislodge:
Sumer is icumen in,
scuttling the bottom with tail and claw,
pregnant with the mud of deep down things,
patient in folds of skin, and beautiful, and barbed.