roostless 

when the chickens cannot find a roost
they find a skull. pile on each other 
in the shoulder blades of the yard. 
i do not have a roosting instinct 
or even an instinct to come home when
the sky starts turning dreamsicle. 
i have tried to be a wristwatch person 
& even a person with wings. the middle
of the night chews my fingers. i stand 
on the roof, peeling lobes off the moon.
it is ripe & i am not sharing. the chickens 
use me as a roost. soon we will all 
return to dinosaur. i believe in cycles
& thus the age of giganticness is on its way back.
i am hoping to be a herbivore but the chickens
suggest that being a carnivore is more fun.
more of a chase. i tell the chickens i will
care for them even when we are dinosaurs.
the rooster would make a very good terror.
he wants daggers for teeth & a fossil 
on the other side of a dusty man's dream. 
those solar system models never quite catch
just how wild the orbit is. the moons
are looking for a roost they will never have.
the dinosaurs too have stories & poetry 
ready to breathe again. i think if we do not sleep
we do not have to grieve. we can keep moving
& the earth can keep moving & we can
go aquatic again. the chickens do not like
that idea. it rains microplastic. at first
i mistake a bead for a droplet of water.
on my tongue it feels prehistoric. a footprint
twisted into a pin-prick. i wait for the sun.
for the chickens to scatter & do their yard plucking.
worms who thought they could sleep in. 
i stretch. feel like a trash bag of coat hangers.
weep for my big cavernous organs. for the lizard
i will soon be. for the time the orbit will take
to make us massive & somehow still roostless.