Dreams of Eating Dirt

I happen through the forest into a fertile steppe
across a murky river frothing against its banks.
Sunken within, a man is seated on a horse,
his hands bound by obsidian strands of her hair.

Beside the river she is knitting hymeneal
crowns of jasmine alongside the rider’s grave.
Her hair-long (less one chunk), blankets his plaque,
her eyes sodden the soil beneath her veiled gravidity.

I see these things and bend to eat the earth,
where the fecund taste brings resolve
to my barren visage, so impotent to her,
and is there - a monolith - when I wake.