Looking at the wild shrub
I chose not to cut down.
The one the Cherokees called
“hearts bursting with love”
Its pink fleshy pods
Open to reveal five seeds
of the most outrageous orange

The shrub has several stalks
Only one is overwhelmed
with those vibrant fruits
The stalk that is obviously dying

Sacrificing its own self
To feed the fruit more profligately
The children joyously
Consume their mother

Have you ever noticed
The fruitfulness of death
The tree or shrub
That creates wildly
In the days of its own destruction?

Birth and Death are Yin and Yang
The end of each always
The beginning of the other

People are no different
They too feel the chill
And seek to find a purpose
Before they perish

It is then
They plumb the depths of being
For perhaps the first time
In their entire lives

Mark the profundity
The leering crowd hopes to hear  
In the condemned man’s words
Right before the hangman
Springs the trap