
Ache
Stooping down,
here,
I remember the honey blooms
on my grafted kalanchoe
and the bursting April storm clouds
that
brought
my
garden
back:
so hard-fought,
setting the night greens on fire
with gold,
opening their mouths—
alive.
I praised those miracle, myriad heads of life!
I counted them with my eyes—
felt their fight.
Yet, there inched that
small,
black,
thick,
spotted
thing
devouring.
And I wondered at him, too,
as he gobbled the
flaming,
nascent
buds,
left to right,
in his invisible tines—
this miraculous being
that would soon
close himself off to the world
and transform.
A tear broke across my cheek,
and that ancient ache came
to gnaw inside my chest,
speaking:
To sing the caterpillar’s praises
is to wish my flower’s end.
And to save my sweet kalanchoes
is to wish the caterpillar dead.
A Burning Observed
I had been dead
for almost too long—
that burning decay
made good on its
promise to
light a decrepit fire
through my veins,
to consume
health and light,
to force all good
to fall away.
On that bed,
a void of sorts,
I only had my mind—
and it turned to water:
flowing from pipes
and down drains,
dripping from childhood spickets,
then falling down like rain,
filling swimming pools,
then dancing in oceans,
all submerging me
like John did the Christ.
And I thought of
the Whitewater Falls
of the Carolinas
surging
and standing
at its mountain ledge.
I felt a burning then, too,
as I watched the waters
converge
and rush out
down
past the rocky summit—
overcoming debris
and
defeating every pillow moss rock
that stood
before its power.
How I was swept up, too!
Like the fire did,
the waters devoured,
but it was better.
It brought life—
feeding the sourwoods
and famished blackberries,
beckoning the brown trout
upstream for spawning,
and filling its watcher (me)
with a belief
in something
that was grand and new.
Oh, now I know
there is a reason why
my burning dreaming
turned to water:
Always, always,
Nature knows
water puts out fire!
First Draft
Erasure
across a tired page
is all that remains
from the years:
rubber debris
left to right,
that vast landscape
of smudge
forces a gulf between
meaning and blight.
Sweeping change
across the horizontal lines
carry the seasons
but with each revision
we are blotted out
and I cannot
recall
much else
but addled
hearts.
God knows
we could have been something.
Been more.
God knows
I tried to hold it in my hands,
breathe it to life
and put it down.
But now,
when I search for it
only pronouns remain,
on the edge
in gray shadows
like carcasses:
I, you, we, us,
then
just
me
with everything else
obscured.
Oh, I look
but cannot tell
what draft this was.
The first perhaps?
But nothing more.