Flourishing Protector

The sweetness of the grass,

From where the trees of apples fall,

Dainty lying in the dew and mist

Of summer’s tears,

Clutches close the ruby fruit unplucked,

Virgin in its ungazed glistening-

But damp will find its way;

The bitter worms are first to snatch

Them up, the rounded spheres of pleasure,

Preserved when mothers stood taller.

Not even winter, with her bitter tongue,

Had spat upon such an illusion

With the words that eternal storms

Had forced through clenched, bulging lips:

Never the decency with night’s airs

Remained when fells lay kisses

From the stalker unbroken,

And constant came the clash of axe

To gun and bark to flesh,

Bared flesh for the fight under watched hours,

Until- silence- where from the stone crimson

Was torn the tree, roots and hair

Begged to a new wildflower with unwilling core.

Taken up, would stalks have been,

Used for nothing but the sweetness

Of the way they danced,

Those fragrances they gave to meadow-grass

When graciousness had in their birth-roost

Bitter turned from marks of insects,

So-called ‘glory bites’ of lust and life;

Instead it clutched hand to branch,

Reattached the finger to the lined genus;

That motionless cradle of protection

Rocked the fruit, once stolen,

To be only unplucked by nature herself,

The natural circumstances

The only cause for stemming tears,

The only memory of the nonsense

Rift that day and night once discussed

Through their open discourse

With unbridled mouth;

In all that was torn, that one stability

Kept close the virgin bodies’ soul,

So infants lying would, at once, feel unity,

The winding path ahead firmer by joy,

That gentle breeze with the truest eye:

The sweetness of the grass.