Plant this seed

She tells me to plant this seed.

It's not much of a seed,
this seed.

It's not much of anything,
with wee crags and crenels
its slip of a crescent slides through
the creases of my palm,
but she insists it’s robust.

She persists with me,
This seed can live within,
where there are no waysides,
no rocks, no thorns.

It can live despite
the greedy shadows everywhere.

It will thrive
basking in the light of a future sun.

This is not Egypt,
she says.

No wicker basket will deliver you.

The river here isn’t strong enough,
she tells me,
and above her there’s the drone
droning on,
droning her out,
but in it I still hear her,
and she lets me have her ear too.

So came she to sow
and the souring
night couldn’t discourage
her final words to me.

Not thirty, or sixty
or one hundred days,
but one day,
the plant will grow
and it will be grown
to a great height,
a height higher than you
can imagine it reaching.

Its future sun will be
your present sun,
and the old days,
even older ways,
will wither wanting
their lost light and the fluid
love taken up by these
stronger roots.

I take a secret pleasure in being disabused of my fonder illusions

It was
put a bow on it pretty,
our democracy
with its polka-dot accountability
and its tissue-paper truths.

The discount-bin card arrived
separately, postage due,
and with a punctilious script
it promised us
a curlicued freedom from
antiquated forms of expression.

Our very love was
ceremoniously given,
but was it
ever right-
fully ours?

Let’s render up the flattering
notion of own,
as it's grown so fatty
lipped it wears a perpetual pout.

The gift was merely Caesar’s
grandiloquent concession
tagged liberally,
“To: Us,
a meekly over-entertained many
whose we, drained of meaning,
poses no coherent threat.”

Not yet.