The riverside is sprayed with seed,
The air filled with luminous beads,
Infinitesimal galaxies ajar
From a wooly cluster of stars.
They're freed from distended branches
Stiff from holding light, phalanxes
Of down escaping the white haired wisdom
In a kind of birth, that will come
In some invisible dirt womb
To arise as if from a tomb —
What codes does it hold and cannot recall
In its blind strike at the light's call?
There's a mother, in there, somewhere,
Who inculcated the terror
Of everything that couldn't be answered
In the one book that was left her.
At one time, she threaded her truth
Through biblical verse as she looped.
Now it's the Washington Post, where darkness
Rises at dawn with the rest.
The ducks turn in circles, cattails
At sunset burn red, and the trails
Are full of late smoke at the end of the day.
Each branching has something to say.
The book is only a rumor,
An old superstition exhumed,
Though she cries for her children in darkness
As they cry for all she has missed.
