Contraction After the fusion of blood and tree, I descended, the voice of derision singing in my ears, past the wet-green eyes of my mother, down, past dry lips of statues, falling, through open doors, through graveyards, junkyards, a quarry of dry bones and fridges, past train-wrecks and dead horses, down, past falling towers and exploding engines, down, through smoky forests and palimpsests of mud, through florid rings of fire, past the crushed flowers on the hospital bed,