Mud
My immigration ends with colonials
Shrinking to mere evidence
And what it doesn't show: their graveyard down the hill;
An invitation to decompose and contemplate
The fierce discovery and reconstruct
Its image through alternating appearances
And their inversions to sustain the present
Faithful as the past in its devotion
To the home and scrubbing its floors with basil,
The bridge with a tree growing through its middle,
The waterfalls' level and a kinship code
With a fingery fist from the sky
Flattening the earth so it can flood
Into my eyes, deconstructing even
Themselves to re-use the piled-up boards
And survive the poisoning of oceans
By the solitary gardener uprooting ivy
And ferns, salting the land, planting broken frames
Of the sublime—cartilage, ribs and backbones—
And forgetting they retain power to condemn
Any address down to its mud:
Its children's play, the most important
Source and resource, tinted nutmeg,
The first step and a bench to rest;
Mud house, oven, animal, adored,
Jars for water, a window on dawn,
No straight lines, round corners, fawn
Colored incline of a wall inscribed with star,
Vine, crescent, stork smile and embedding
Of broken dishes, herbs, fronds and a car
Headlight to deflect the evil eye.
This mud on my address won't let it die.
Page(s) 9
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