A milkweed has it in it to become Something, and challenges the field With myriad pods above the other stalks, And then there's the whiteness, all that whiteness, 5 Clumped and disparate with the wind slow, A slow diaspora that struggles mostly Into our reservoir just there, or plants its flag In the same field that served as home. There's that in us as well that never waits, 10 That wants out,- and gets out too,- past fields It blows out onward always in the mind, Same as the milkweed taken root and risen To spurn its soil, and dies in seeding out its thought; Just so, our light cares, light temptations 15 Lift out and abandon us, and we wish it so. Some other valley's always more our sort, Some other sunset igniting through the gorse. Hand me that dead milkweed stem you've Yanked up there- thanks. See how the lips 20 Have gone to beaks with vomiting dreams All day long and under the August sun? Here's one deep-in hasn't the heart for escape, For leaving the only home its ever known; No matter if that home is dead or soon to die, 25 Home is home. There's a reach in the design, Wispy almost-nothing pulled to this seed Soft as a moth, perfect for an escape Once the pod's blown out, hardened to scrap- Necessary for these feathers to move on 30 Into the endless. Rise after rise Lies past this embankment of peaches, straight on To the sea out somewhere, toward the Pacific perhaps To judge by the wind. Never thought of it, Although I suppose we all crawled from there, 35 But that's one home not hardened yet, Not the sea, not yet, or if it had, Something else has troubled it back to life.
From the collection "Assembling the Earth"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.