Each painterly dusk, I again go
swirling past bunches of
autumnal and warmly-
lit supermarket windows—
own several little
bottlegreen baskets of
chrysanthemum
plants—each, in turn, with its various
stiff little branches reaching
to grow
stiffer—and each of those
branches—plush with it's own black-
licorice leaves curling
thicker and yet-thicker
in the slow creeping cold.
And each leaf now defining its own unique plane,
angled this way or that—contributing
to a quickening feeling of such
immense depth! Until—
yes, it becomes positively too dense
to distinguish! And it's only
to distinguish! And it's only
then that I begin to see—
each prodigious leaf
on each
branch on each
plant in each window
has come—somehow
weaving its way
up my chilly spine to my
mind, where it might finally
alight and thus
show me—how it's still
possible
to grow up
but never—grow old.