[i Am Glad I Have Seen Racehorses, Women, Mountains...] Poem by Shane Markie

I am glad I have seen racehorses, women, mountains
glad I have sung, stretched my back, peeled skin from my sun-burnt arms; I am grateful to have had a good enemy,
and to have fought, knowing there is no end to fighting.

There are few things to believe, and many things to know, and they are all mixed up in a rusty can,
but when you are thirsty, even the rust
tastes of life. I am glad I have seen pumpkins, contortionists,

a mound of snow the size of a house; glad to have stunk a while in the hole left by love, to have smiled
when an enemy was injured without reason,
to have realized there was a day the battle would end, for me.

There are tunnels and crevices beneath our feet, and weeds
springing up from between them, and beneath that, yes,
it is hot, but it is not a heat that concerns us, nothing human there, though we may, given time, be ground down again into that molten sea.