John Baumwoll, who
dubbed all the redbuds trash trees,
weak in the knees at the sight of an
unkempt lawn, reads Silent Spring
to the buffaloed daffodils staggering
back from the pall, to the fairy
rings thumbing the tire tread
cross-eyed, secretly vying
to rile some vibrant rise
of the verdant and green-
cheeked contempt
of but grass blades rallying,
dallying sod of preponderant
green streak apocalypse, kudzu cudding
the paddocks and carparks
back to what wild-eyed tabards of locusts
and sycamores, suturing gods to the neck-
cricked gley—though
what sort of seed was a cigarette filter
flicked
at the bellying hip of a curb, no
more disturbing still than the man-
icured lawns in lieu of those
serpentine seas of lean
and snickering tall grass
taking the
coal-cracked,
poodle-cut, possum-
tailed hills back—slack-
jawed, stubbled, re-
doubling—much
as the moon moans
cracked, restored, and
shorn—what
cow-licked crown of a swollen tulpa
heavenly tethering everything spring suspends
in a furor of hot and throttling flowers, Baum-
woll trying to mortar a castle with lace-
wings picked from a scaling scalp, the
paper plate skull pitched into a
grease-eaten radio tower at-
tempting to harvest the crab-
apple mincemeat of Eden with
only some gap-toothed ladder he’d
bent from a crestfallen sunbeam, late
on its rent again.
