Flowers blooming
Such as make a clear sky float atop the limestone hills
And strange clouds of the spreading cedar boughs
Lightning strikes of twisted oaks
And dancing rain of mesquite
Leaping deer grown fat with summer grass
Kings seeking queens even while they wear their velvet hats
Before their crowns emerge in full and they go to war
Where even the winners will be deposed
By the bullets of assassins who do not seek those thrones themselves
But others that sometimes serve as altars
Hearing prayers and receiving outpoured offerings amid lamentations
The smokes of burning drifting on the wind that
Cause no fear but merriment and joy
As people join together around the partial cremation
Partake of what remains
Small pieces of sky wrestled from within calcified clouds that mount
Stacked upon each other where once waters surged and flowed
And ran to depths imagined but seldom seen
And dogs find renown in writers’ work
Less still than they deserve
The virgin’s stream in which
Fish yet swim that are found in few other places
And none so sweet
And by which stand harder woods
Roofs overhead once but no longer
Foundations long since laid and built again
Where the slow fever of the world has yet to sear them away
The sands may creep in and cover them
Drops of brine fall to water the thin crop
Bringing in an uncertain harvest

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