1.
A vert shows in Lilyville, with a rib-ruff upswept from its neck, and bell-cuffs, swoops of a ribby robe on its trunk—it brandishes a yellow spear, flowering at the end.
2.
So then the mock built high in the air and a bracelet of florets far beneath, the rest sketched in with pastels, branches and under-branch alike. The heather mocks beneath.
3.
“Oak Leaves”
The knobs of my fingers, tied into my hands. My hands tied into my arms with rubber loops—acorns sitting in ergonomica, seats of oak leaves. Sprigs and shoots, fires between their arms. Acorns roll out from their seats, then halt—the legsy shoots come up to intercept.
4.
Flatfaced thoughts from a flattened head, the meander and walk of a muttered garden. The garden that broods, its arms behind its back; pansies put flat faces forth. The termites can barely clear the grass, flit ‘til they’re tired and leave their wings to one side—the pansies near stemless, wide-notch blocks against certain sections of sky.
5.
A laughing sprig of chervil shook as a knife towards a friend and now, toward the back of the picture...the weeds gather along and file away down the hillside. They walk and look through the crooks of each other’s arms. The grass they left has thrown the mower over.
A laughing sprig of chervil menaced by the weeding’s designs.
6.
Left in a clearing, a pulled mandrake shrieks to shake the leaves about it, quivering its limbs to be bagged and replaced. Or a mandrake coughs between the humps of roots, seething from its pull. Or a mandrake unpulled with the shone rays of the sun through the clearing-tops, and trees to this side and that.
7.
Turn, a vale speaks, with all its voice, with all its voices, it spends this voice in the throngs—the noiseless eyes of cornflowers, rustling to perform. Voles root beneath, pressing and squealing the scene about. As each finishes moving his particular scenery-piece, he runs about to the marked crank and starts the turning voices of the vale that speaks.
8.
With flourishes we end. Having ceased writing, we wind up the springs of our write in the thickets of flourish. Having finished our thicket a rabbit could well cross the short path and briefly walk into it. Or perhaps a pigeon could cross the same path.
Perhaps this pigeon could wear a top hat on his head and carry a cane beneath his arm. Supposing a wind could brush our thicket flat and lay bare the walker within. The walker between heris feet would spout a rare flower---the wild well-dispositioned ______.
9.
Having briefly disposed of use, I went for a short walk, that talked itself out into a long one; it ended among hills, dispensed roundish here and about; and here a blackberry bramble ran the ground, and I found it to resemble use, to sprout everywhere and here about; tenacious as it is, and ceaseless.
-2001
