The tobacco duster and my was-dog

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.

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