For being here

Dead Fennel

I climb the barren hill. Summer
has taken it all. Scrabs of scattered
thistle amid a ruin in black nettle.

Not a kiss or flower to be had.
Not yours, not theirs. Far below,
a mother calls to her children.

Answers come in windstrain
testing the structure of wings
as kestrel slits a throat of sky.

A world lies fertile in every
direction and none appeal
to me. I am for being here.

Trace rim and slip crown
to slope the downing side
where rabbitskitter scuttles.



Burrows resist sun in black
refusals piercing what remains
unseen within the hidden.

Coyote tracks confirm patience,
resilience, resolve, each hole
collared in hungered adornment.

I move in spirals toward what
becomes arcless and unswelling,
the infertile hill rising behind.

Long stalks bend low like
pilgrims at temple; form a
bleak devotion of dead fennel.

I am home here, dead among
dead, living among what stirs
to be alive within all of it.

Joseph Gallo
October 22, 2010