Aestas
Risen within the dominion of chance,
Bold wild flowers, holding forth with their sway.
Flaunting their freedom from beyond the fence,
Showing off with their colorful display.

Making free their offerings to the sky.
Spreading their seedlets with wild abandon,
Each pod left alone for the by-and-by—
Safe in solitude until its season.

You
Are
Something else entirely—
A new definition to replace the old.
What did they tell you that you were going to be?
She was a figment,
Fragile and easily wasted.
You struck like lightning,
A crackling storm.

You scraped her out until she was hollow,
Nothing but a shadow,
So quick to the new you wished to embrace,
But with no trace left to follow,
They frowned
And scoured for something that you erased.

Una mujer otoñal, transparente y sensible
como el lenguaje de la montaña,
susurra cánticos ancestrales
desde la desaparecida Sealth.

Una mujer que evoca tiempos de nostalgia,
en otoño,
aparece toda rodeada de neblina.

I could say “eat my dust,”
but we both know that will never happen,
how hollow that old chestnut sounds,
coming from me, as
as hollow as the
rotten, caved-in nurse log where I was
curled, in pulsing, hermaphroditic bliss with my
mate just this morning. Jealous?

You see, my plight is no
Hero’s Journey. Joseph Campbell could never.
There is no prize, no diamond, no conclusion,
save for the salt shaker, wielded by a zealous
gardener, or the moment I find myself
caught in the beak of a satisfied crow,
my limbless body waving like an earth-toned
surrender flag, my feelers retracting a
final time.