There is something, a more perfect flame
Born of the cold of its self-destructive Same
As all fire in every iteration.
Why does it consume, a being therefrom
Ash, budding in envy and infantile,
Itself? Where shall it return? Tragedies
In waves and yet I’m so affixed
To those weeping, weeping lost
Amidst themselves, wanting completeness
Or one leaf to survive them
Through the Spring. Here, amidst
The tragedies, red-eyed, disheveled
And hoping for rebirth.
I will stand here, bury it in earth.

One plough amongst many runs ‘cross
An infertile campus
The threat of first frost
Following in her tow
To reap one something
From the settled bed of salt.
Combing seeds in the sod,
The anchor in her womb
Drags—soon, so soon,
The distance won’t widen, the burden will stop
Her knees will buckle in debt and chance
Will lock her where she falls
Her failure will sprout and flower.
The falling sweat flashed years before
To the juice beading in single drops
A vain nectar of her other’s field,
Biding her, come, eat of appearance;
Her crop was brown, but budding,
She left her crop to die.
Unprepared for the neglected miles
She toiled in the changing leaves
And, of course, the gilded fellow
Him, the established man
Could draw her in: with gleaming ivies
Red, tight, yellow, sweet
A wine of the eyes that sits on the vine
Families of prodigality smiles with brimming bags
Baskets pregnant in promise,
Those happy mouths full of praise and food.
For there, she followed
That procession, honest, in the borrowed garden.