a child’s hand is laying soft at the stilt

it is resting and sunburning,

she is unmattered and ever-wastening,

he is the cruel light breather

the wood plow gleaming -

its sun: beaming

There is no thought about anyone’s softness or continuance

nothing about keeping;

no terms, long, elusive or elsewise /

just those demon tendrils swaying in the sun;

that worn out cursed greenness

infecting every line of sight

White pupils ever yielding

to a great unplaced yellow mantle

that crests above the child’s eyes

and he has no thoughts about that either /

this one’s face contorted

to provide an uneven

semblance of a

covering - a pretension,

it amounts next to

nothing

full maintaining contact

with the beams -

training for a lifetime of wickedness

he says to himself lazily, “I’ll let this field be barren”

and leaves his plow to rot

with the potatoes;

and it does.

From this rot, a deeper green than he has ever seen

 

lays waste to the landscape;

from this rot,

the flowers are blooming

Then, sometime later;

this rot,

the mangled garden

of a lifetime

seethes it’s anger,

pushes food up

inches below the topsoil

 

 

 

the newest line,

delineator of the glade,

entrance into canopy;

unenthroned

fertilizer of the seasons

marking territory - traps set

for all nutrients.

He looks to see

Daybreak,

He’s waterside;

Esther is asking him to put off another project;

“just one more decade will do” she weeps

“If you could live in your laziness

just a little longer,” she croaks

a thrush-like schiffornis,

soaking up the last sky-nightness,

screams it out over worrying hills.

suddenly he’s awake enough

stands upright

speaks his mind

and says to himself:

 

 

 

 

“May all your children be blessed by this inability.”

she responds in the dawn

“yes…” pauses, tarries, then

in a whisper,

“just as long you do not invent

a paradise.”