Veriditas

When this season arrives, a dark forgotten well
starts gushing again, the creek bed in my spine

marrowed with moss and babbled with pebble song,
more local to the bone than basil or thyme.

Lower than roots, my juice still in its breathless stone,
I've fallen for a wanderer with uncombed maidenhair,

a shepherdess reclining on her elbow,
dangling fern fingers, sapling hips of pine

splayed from a nurse log. Slow as evening,
gestures of mushroom and cedar frond conceal

last summer's light, her feet the rain on huddled wolves.
She's thistle in the apple's root, a plum twig

twisted in her dream of seeds, secret fragrance
I’d fast and starve these thirsty lips all winter for,

groping for the milk of her name. Now friend,
abandon words and wander into the ground.

 

~A poem from my book, 'Wounded Bud'