I must turn to beef in order
to become weightless, must
grow horns like anvils and
haunches like levees to reach
high above the earth, must
bull through quicksand
and china shops and road
blocks and poorly-given
sermons and science dull
as boiled tubers in order
to leave my hooves and join
the constellations, blanketed
with light, curled into a fetal
ball, a gestating starseed
about to burst like fireworks,
the loud and vibrant kind you
have to drive to Tennessee
to find, the kind that lay siege
on the heavens like cannons
pointed toward the moon,
spreading sparks as far as
these higher winds wish to carry.