I

Neither firm nor firmament under the oak,
elm, or even the low hedge on Herron lane.

It’s two foot height constant for forty years,
maginot line corralling fear with naiveté,
stunted by angry X’s from skinny wrists, set jaws.

Those were the icebergs whose roots assumed
mother’s on Thanksgiving, kids at Christmas
and warmth from a fire’s photograph.

A mercurial song commenced without lyrics,
operatic tones including all the ang’s echoed
oblong emotions, unspoken, unwritten notes.

II

The Ironweed’s anger is covert.
It grapples in clutches, squatter’s rights
guarded by heavily accented grumblings.

Needing little, it is fierce in its claims
on the stingy fringes behind bounty’s
dumpster, jealous enough to die of thirst.

Its quick and purple bud, the ruse of honest
offering, rushes the season as protection,
like the lamb's blood on the doorpost.

III

These are the magnolia leaves, complaining
in plastic barks as the metal rake gathers
them like grubs in a primordial, patient hunger.

Clattering shells the color of long attic’d
naugahyde long retired from sickly visits,
forgotten bus trips to (and from) brown hope.

Soon, after winter’s amnesia, the magnolia,
forgetting the weary burden of its
hand grenade cone, will don its silly hats.

IV

Life’s toll for the tumbleweed is pieces
and seeds. A migrant/stow-a-way dressed
proletariat with faces rubbed blanched, blurry.

Seamless gypsy whose stolen children are
shaved and posed in southwestern décor though
they were worthless nuisance or arsonist to natives.

Avoid the wind and you’ll not notice them.
They’re freest where others won’t encamp, they
die in quiet wither, whither thou not goest