Dwelling
The cowslips dipped and daffodils
spilt fat bees tippled out their buds.
When I was younger, laughing still,
some rumble of a summer’s rumor
spat seed-stuff like a tremored flood
where honey-gold of clover scattered.
Returning to this meadow older,
all swimming matter holds its trinkets;
rankled odor of a burning pasture
I’ve long ago glozed in remembrance.
I look again. The world sweeps off,
a drunken glimmer frozen sober.
Cold leaf-rot scuttles motley heaps
where beetles whittle moldered sticks—
the mallow thick with sickened branches,
dried-out nettles, hollow stalks.
Wind flashes dark. Light needles quick.
A mass of ants through lumber mazing
spells this fastness I have dwelled in.
Such fumbling days, sun shuffles off
blanched sprig and duff. A trance of rocks:
a secret blaze each grasshead faces,
mouth on mouth. One day I, too,
will pinwheel ditch-side as a tendril
while from the cinders spring new seedlings,
pips, pap, sap, and thistles, tinder.
Now thunder cracks, now lightning licks
a forked tongue down the forest’s lap.
Disaster is the aftermath of love
that’s nourished on spent scraps picked over.