Monday, March 25, 2019

LAST YEAR'S TREES

Last year's trees—do not come back here
without the intensest kind of hunger,
without their old fear of an everlasting
night, without fully expecting

to lose all of their proud currency
and to stand there again eventually
as blind and petrified monuments
to poverty. And so—neither do we

leave without completely losing
control of every appetite,
without forgetting the smooth feel
of the seeds of our anger, without

laying down those heavy
strapped purses and bulging back
pocket wallets which we use
to conceal and carry the calcified

marginalia of our sorrow—and
somehow, without fully expecting
never ourselves to become the neat plots
of land which will re-feed them next year.