Pleasantries

 ‘Das Angenehme dieser Welt hab’ ich genossen’

                                    Hölderlin

Don’t rely on another time of year.

It is now. Moss on the rough bark

of a wingnut tree says ‘north, north’

and the supplanted dead on their side

of the Ammer chew over the thirst of roots:

their sublingual gasp, their spread; suction.

All that has been drawn – materia medica –

from the graveyard-made-botanical-garden

is filed away somewhere in this town,

seedbank of the Green movement,

the left wing struggling to lift from

its muddy tomb, flash its bright feathers.

            John Kinsella