Alicia Brown
As a matter of great importance
Come. Let me tell you. We don’t have long—
only a life. Only the way the fern bends
like a fish bone towards the light, soft,
its many leaves their own entireties. Green.
All the greens. Chlorophyll and clover.
Let me tell you the gate where tomatoes
spill their sweet bloat through the stiles,
round as worlds, tops curled into sepal claws
that clutch the thing. Yes, right there. Come,
there is a caterpillar stripped of form and
function brewing on a wall. There is the wall,
but there is also its survivor. Silken chrysalis.
Barbed beginning. The willingness to be and
to not, to knot, to unravel so far as to throw
yourself at an edge and say: hold! And
to be held, despite it all. Look, listen, take
whatever body you have and grasp it by
the clothesline. Grasp it by the thistle. Grasp it
by the dog who sniffs the sacred, who scratches
through the chicken shit, who sheds his brown fur
and belongs, for all of a moment, to a single
patch of sun. Scream. Come. Ask the breath
into your chest like we are not all dying.
Take the moon into your mouth like we are.
There is dew beaded on the honeysuckle
and spiders know nothing of their temples,
so pray. We don’t have long. Come, the
shells are growing warm on the windowsill.
Shadows learn our limbs: crook of a neck,
spill of a heart, knuckled fingers reaching
to be reached towards. Do you want to be kept
after you are gone? Give it up—there is only
everything. The ocean persists. Sky bursts
to plum above spear grass. Listen, your skin
is an urgency. Come. We don’t have long.
