White Oaks display tenuous longevity
Tethered to red dirt , moss populated
living testaments , etched in black decay
like tombstones marking an ending location
What man did fire in anger from this hillside
Fire for daily bread , wracked in hunger , steeped
in the unknown , slighted by his brethren , ill
recompensed , foolhardy leg deep sagebrush
foraging lonely wilderness outposts , a foreign beast
racked with chilblain , feverish at deaths gate
Hickorys cry golden kin in frosted wind , red inquiries
mingled in dark earth decay , vermin infested rot ,
pungent pile reeking recompense , scavenger trolled
dead carpet , crying in fog drenched stupor , collecting
in leaf well , motif sunbeam , signaling the birth of midday
shine neath Maple umbrellas
Beside talking waters , ravenous , diamond temptress , committing Summers deceased corruption to the sea
Mosaic sands , evergreen curiosities , glass creek- boulder
kaleidoscopes , lapping shorelines , mud foaming froth
hiding unknown depth
Laughing , forever cascading artery without mercy
Teeming with pan , bream , perch and sturgeon
Alligator shell scavenger , water moccasin , consumption
Pine labyrinths , sunless Fern gardens , Snake , Dew , Red berry
briarpatch mazes , rolling countryside without fence , encaged in Crescent Moon , lantern fly obscurity with voracious Aedes vampires , humid , blistering night without end* ...

I come upon the winding road in the thicket
with a candle on my forehead, forging ahead
in the delightful remove.
Where the curves of the world
have cobblestones and ivy.
Briarpatch eyes and lazy ravens
painting the sky
too Blue.

I keep my leaving in my stationery hive of rain
and long mourning. Happiness chips away at the frost
of a dormant grove of beleaguered charms…
where hornets sleep on spikes of spun sugar
and canaries  are more yellow
than a laughing
Truth.

New growth sprouts in my garden
Lit by the twinkling starlight
Watered by care and patience
Fertilized by vulnerability

Who knows what might grow
Now that the briarpatch is gone?
What new plants might take root
In this precious loam?

I can't know what will grow
But Thalia whispers of abundance
In many harvests yet unseen