Behind the Cilantro

 Out back behind the cilantro

            rose garden

            grew grain       grew corn

            the bean rows.

 

The Neptune-blue twilight

where the ravens flew

            glue west to east

with red gold greyish hues.

 

Most seeds fall on clay.

            We snooze;

            they whither.

 

And in the supernova baked day

            when field mice roam

            and foam fills the sapling armpits

where the toads played,

the crop,

            a sculpture       horticultural opera

stops operating its photosynthesis

mitosis

germination.

 

Toxic from the top down,

            imported poisons blow

native death

countryside     town     creek    river.

 

We nibble our nails,

            swatch of land starving

hopeless harvest.

***

(Cuenca, Ecuador -- November, 2020)

My poetry really started coming along towards the end of 2020. This poem is a little too nonsensical to have much of a chance to be published, but it's a sign of digging deeper into imagery while moving towards a more contemporary style with the unconventional sentence structure and abundance of sensory detail.