Nothing Is in Such a Hurry as a Dead Herring

Mind is working hurriedly
To gut the brain, salt it
With words to preserve it.

The raw wounds spoil in minutes,
And the entrails already
Begin to stink in their heaps.

In an instant it could all
Go back to nothing but flesh,
Ecosystem for microbes,

But with enough words in it,
Properly dried on the rack,
You could chew on its ideas

All through the longest winter,
Subsist on it through the night.