there is the tobacco duster,
bringer to starvèd flowers that
watched the colony fail the morning’s muster
so is she breathing life
unto flowers painting
lungs o ruin
lips o rot and
filth on the walls
she un-sexed fairy duster
blushes at questions of her cancering breath
her making of matches between air and dirt
she alone works when the hive is lost,
colony gone fleeing from canker;
else the meadow fruitless,
this season of flight
this moonlight of want
and i to my was-dog
they are not death-flowers
and yet bootless as a bog
are my resurrective powers
I’ve saved her smoke as a fog
so now;
flower duster breathe these her ashes
unto flowers o want,
into hives o abandon
into mud-combs a-crumble in the eaves,
into the eyes of infants known only to cry
and those near me gone to the woods to die.
