ground plum;

And the word, an encumbrance and hidden like butter sticks,

says that the successes can’t be simplified

as a balm for the soul,

stretching you as an unending spiderweb

across all of our solar miles—

­

only enough—while every other star’s a stage,

a little spider duded up and decorated with another inner cosmos;

a standing figure in the lesser-aligned dossier

of the ground plum, sprouting in spring then

rotten come fall, then starts over & all again,

­

into and in velvet, in the ever-elongated orchard.

I am hardly that horn-developing day, hardly the height of hurt,

barely that rotting plum.

Nevertheless, a Nevada desert of my own accord

is clipped out of me and into bits: settled and satisfied.

—And I’m wishing it would rain so something could grow.