Barbarity: Forty Days And Forty Nights

I woke up like a fawn in the rain
wishing to be Forty Days And Forty Nights,
but an ark was in me.

“I am Forty Days And Forty Nights!” I thundered,
and a small, stubborn voice answered back from within me,
“But I have all the animals of the world, here, together,
and we float.”

I sucked out all the moisture from my belly in a great wind
and tore all the fruit off every tree and yelled,
“I am Forty Days And Forty Nights!”
and another tiny voice called out
from the dishevelment and the wilds inside me,
“But I am here to listen, oh Forty Days And Forty Nights,
I have come to learn your song.”

What could I do but grumble and growl
and groan and howl and beat bruises into my chest?

Then a third voice, a tired rock of a voice, called out from inside me,
“I am but a mountain, oh Forty Days And Forty Nights,
and what I say means nothing, but why do you punish this man
who, broken, clings to my peaks like a suckling lamb?”

“I am Forty Days And Forty Nights!” I screamed.

Then the tiny voice, the man: “Please, mountain,
do not throw your wing over me.
I have come to learn the song of Forty Days And Forty Nights,
and I have heard it, and its verses were as sweet as kisses in my ears.”

And with that the man walked down the mountain
beating at his chest, stamping his feet, shouting,
“I am Forty Days And Forty Nights!”

I dashed out on my slender legs to weep
below the opening leaves of the trees,
turned like saucers of spilling milk.
The thousand nipples of the forest budding above me,
white fingers of the ash drizzled me with water.

What I had broken has redeemed me.