Exploding around the base
of the oaks, like drops of cyan,
magenta, and rust that fall
to infect and scar the soft earth

as it consecrates the act
of life with a breath of mist.
Like a song covering the valley
does this ground conceive,

answer, or rebel against them
across its thick quilt of parking lots
and open fields stitched with asphalt,
when it is revealed in the flash

of a firefly at midnight
or the remnants of that melody
exhaled on a winter morning.
They are tiny shadows

that lurk beneath tall grass
before disappearing into a queer purple,
weeds of a sort, standing strong
against the light as it floods

the trees, reveling in the dark as it pools.
A witness to the earth’s attempts
to love, they suffer the sun to dance
their slow waltz across the forest

floor.  They are certain of kinship.
The flowers stare but will not 
acknowledge, the stones receive them 
as they make their requests.