Winter weeds,
survivors
of a golden age,
take over the open land,
pale armies
redressing the balance

Again we live 
in a time of fasting,
burlap cassocks,
monks on their knees,
bells tolling
in an empty sky

among the thin,
the trampled-on,
the inarticulate
clothed in drafts
and rooted in shocked earth
which resembles nothing

fields and fields of them

                  *

Teasel
yarrow
goldenrod
wheat 
bedstraw
Queen Anne’s lace
drop-seed
love grass:
plain, strong names,
bread and water

A woman
coming in from a walk
notices how drab
her hair has become
that gray and brown
are colors
she disappears into

that her body
has stopped asking
for anything except calm

                  *

When she brings them
into the house
and shortens them
for the vase,
their stems break
like old bones,
clean

No holding on
No bitter odor
No last drop of juice

Hers, as long as she wants them

Their freedom from either/or
will outlast hers every time

                  *

The dignity of form
after seduction
and betrayal
by color

the heads, 
separate,
but held together
by an old design
no one has thought
to question

the open pods
that have given 
and given again
dullness of straw,
which underlies
the rose
the grape
the kiss

the narrow leaf blades,
shape of the body

the fine stems,
earliest brushstrokes,
lines in the rock
on the wall
the page