Secure Site

at least three selves:

            one to guard the snakes,

coiled deep in the dungeon;

            one to foil the moles,

sapping under the keep;

            & one to leave by

the sally-port, when the dragon’s asleep:

these are the nursery rhymes

      of being here

      & at the same instant

escaping to Africa:

        fleet in the feet of a gazelle,

        voice that tells in a river’s spell,

        thought that waits in the bow of a lake—

& this is the fable of real-time

protection,

        within & without:

the treacherous self quarantined,

the archers waiting at the murder holes,

the battlements manned,

the oil ready & boiling;

            the redoubt a firewall

            of security essentials;

the route out and shutdown planned

(oubliette

            & the days when

all could be forgotten,

washed into the moat

              with our enemies)

legend of the triple tasks:

        the back-up saving

the joydrive; the deathwatcher

        scanning for arrows;

the immortal traces

        stored in high nimbus

sending me these my thoughts

  go straight to junk—

    surviving, though unsaved,

implicit marks in different space—

yet I would rather be safe

        & lie in the warm muddy dreams

                                       of hippotami