Pass, Pass, Pass
Wild Violet, a midnight dig, alchemy in it,
the spade hitting earth, a showering of silt
from the verdant lit by flashlight
where neighbor’s butter-pat windows will not see
this wilderness witchery or my nails of clay
through the fertile purple & pungent paper bag.
Pass, pass, pass—–
how it all falls away with vulnerable will under this cold Spring half-moon
every loneliness must escape the close physicality of.
Oh, all you happy-sad drunkards, all you bar, you phone presences,
you lit Karaoke voices, you whispers of velvet, you cloth textures,
you loves long past not to be the hostage of, nor the carved tree
initials for, or the inscriptions in water, the spirits rippling sheer
where soul met soul or sidestepped to salvage a drowning life
in the charms & price of talking alcohol…
So these woods find me, little Wolfsbane Eden
in our metropolitan harbor, our suburb polite
past the yowling hungers, the silent echolocation
where no, not any longer, will I crawl about.
The games are old but nothing to the rites Ancients protect
by this solo garden shoring ghosts for prayers & the wiser difference
leaving all the loves which could not be saved by any faith of mine.