It is only vascular—
casting her role as janitorial,
even the most sunchasing among us, destructive and anemically aware,
eat at the shell of the mother, devouring her container, whole.
yet even the maniacal walleyed.one.percent,
plunge their heavy caskets of legacied mahogany
—though hand-carved and decadent— into her same dark and ready earth.
and the worms make good way of lazy waste, for it is only vascular,
equally to all, // this warranted decay //
and in right reciprocity, upon flaring hiccups,
the sun demagnetizes poles like a retired patron.
Here we find dwindling evidence of the Green, the Colorado, the Snake.
Each belonging to place until the two-legged’s displace.
Under ancient water tables, entire languages slink silent into dead seas.
—It is we—
who disobey the great ordained.ontological.order of things.
Writing 44 inches of vertical sorries up the turning trees in desperate spring,
once we’ve scarabbed wreckage into the winged like a cold winter’s bone,
our deaf ears for honeychasers and pollen makers
rendering us white.fence.adorned and laggardly defeated
by this epoch of utterly preventable, indecent descent.
Unpollinated, here. we. are.
To the bumbling, the world is loud with our silences.
We follow the cairns left by the ones who came before,
Their stories stitched under tongue by time, becoming our own.
Are these the fingerprints of stalwart stewards or accomplices?
If my palm is the narthex and the nave,
soulfully stewarding the terrestrial purchase
and tendered.growing.grace of one singular seed,
would she know me as the safe, soft passageway?
Bipeds catapulted from these unseen, sentient pollinators
from whom we are given our every.third.bite.
A whole world here in one transit. A whole world here in one seed.
A whole service muled to the tired unseen atriums of the winged.
A whole race laced skippingly to the fate of a myopic hungry tyranny.
Will we be heavy with sap upon our wings and will we abide?
Upon the singular spine of the individuated ladder climb,
even the most beautiful among us can eclipse fate with inactive catatonia,
riding a filamented self.serving.string of seizure toward a dying sun—
where even the sweet.slow.slumbering gypsy moth can accidentally extinct the oak.
Will we be heavy with sap upon our wings or will we abide?
Amongst our ruins in this 11th hour is a palm.lit.edge,
In every moment, by every hand, a choice to tax or transcend.
Between my ribs, live all aphids.
Between her toes, the wail of heron.
Between his blades, the migration of bison.
Between banging forks, this epoch of plunder.
By opposable thumbs, a pinched notion of rented home.
Are these the fingerprints of stalwart stewards or accomplices?
In parenthood and protectorship, we eat and destroy the very young worlds
we’ve donated tissue and tender ions to create,
even the most sunchasing among us,
destructive and anemically aware, eat at the shell of the mother…
Unpollinated… Here… we… are. In indecent descent.
Was there ever an honest broker from atop the food chain?
