1.

The light that agitates the equator
bounds across your southern frontier,

and being higher in the wage scale
enables trips there to be easier

than the odysseys of those passing
away in the opposite direction.

Where once bandaged soles went
now many machines tie the stitches

between the divides where once again
bandaged souls will traverse.


2.

Our footprint will be larger than life
and beat the earth to an abstract plain.

Where once many names were needed,
our editorial, read as obituary, will need few.

It’s a recursive gesture to prune in order to grow
but who’s hand truly closes the symphony?

Here I find legumes, tubers, a display of sage
and a cold comfort in my palm.

The perfect chicane of the fern’s stem,
tributaries unfurled, reflects in the plastic bucket.