My knife cuts quickly across the stalk of late broccoli and I forget
To rememebr how I planted its sees, how I lifted its sweet adolescent self
Out of nursery bed into permanent row. I forge to look at the crimson feathers
Of sumac blazing at the edge of the garden. I forget also to gaze up
At the roil of clouds pink and gray oin the trail of our sun’s silent descent and now
The rumpled green gift of budding food makes me want to lie down on the earth
To stretch my imperfect limbs in all four directions allowing my left hand
To reach Kandahar until my fingers feel the unholy grit of perfectly burned bone
While my right hand embraces the heartland where the ghost of democracy crouches
In a shadow darka nd unknowing and then I’ll rest my head in Pocumtuck Mountain
And push its long forebearance throgh my toes to washington where dark suited men
Act out a delicate history as if there were nothing to this mysterious world beyond
The solid wood surface of their desks and here below the central fire in me
Beneath this soil where root hairs cling our suffering flows molten with possiblity
And yet above the darkening sky it seems ten thousand stars speak to my body
I the pure and inaudible language of light and the sun is just now rising in Kandnhar
-Susie Patlove