The garden wall--mortared season
By season with sweat--affirms memory:
Grandpa's spade busted this dirt, turned
Out those rocks--row by row--and he
Dry-stacked them across a lifetime. Time
Unhinges labor: there, the ghost of cornrows,
Under blackberry whips. Stratification--
Everything that lives secedes, dies.
Or:
Blackberry leaves--cat's cradle
Of spider webs. Sun flares on bees quick, bees
Slow. An aphid scrawls its rune in pollen.
Thistle. Blue jay wings, wren, sparrow.
Whips saw wind into thin blades. Bear shadow:
Stones, hidden, until they bark a shin.
Deeper:
Thorns, a shred of flannel. Blackberries nod there,
Threaten succulence: STINKBUG. Rubies flower
On thumb and finger, the back of hands: blood
For blood, nirvana; dog days, every wound festers.
Deeper:
Completeness in ruin--garden walls. Stone
Clutters sound. Roots worm, and frost tumbles.
Leper's thumbs, the wasted carcasses of fruit,
And last year's leaves--snakeskins. Somewhere,
A hornet's nest jars the guttural vowels
Of your name, as labor unhinges time.
The lard bucket, riot with berries, cuts thighs.
Skin throbs to the fugue of sweat bees, tattoo
Of scratches. Dusk: crows, drawn to roost,
Cackle rhymes in a locust tree--crude metaphor
For consciousness. Reader, this moment's
This moment, and no other: every wall accretes
Stone____by stone____by stone____by stone.
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