what grows while we’re gone

Turkey vultures circle drenched air
above overgrown fields of
Queen Anne’s lace,
wilted butterweed.

In these meadows, boy,
I learned patience and anticipation.
The space between
juice - drip - and tongue.

“How much longer?”

Dusk falls drunk to evening
as lightning

rips

the sky open,
harsh and exciting.

For a moment,
all eyes lift,
slits narrow on streams of fire
like whips unfurling.

“One, two, three, four …”

Distant roars announce
the possibility of presence.

Do you think you see him?
A darkened shadow.

Veins widen as thunderclouds,
bulged with wet stuff,

rumble until they roar
for release.

“Here is all there ever is.”

The jungles thick with wild things,
turns concrete under blistered feet,
as my pupils diolate and
slits of white stream.

You cross thresholds,
step out from the wood’s edge
into a clearing:
once unseen,
now known.

“Run.”

Tell me, as you round the corner to not here
isn’t it because of,
- not in spite of -
the darkest thickets, bogs, trenches

that you step into newness
and back into what was left behind?

Because even when you leave,
you never really leave.

So whisper, won’t you,
with every turn of the wheel.

“Nothing is wasted, nothing is lost.”