(no subject)

[apiphile]

venetian ships lie offshore

When all around is sick
The musk of dead things in the ground
rises like the perfume of fallen rain
and lifts again the spirit
from these muddy ruts of thought:
you cannot purchase a life
like the crawling multitudes whose stink
is as good as any diagnostic.

I am healthy, i am whole; the earth
is flesh and blood laced with a billion
unseen veins, all whispering language
dumb ape ears cannot comprehend.
we invent lies to fill up silences
that our own deafness brings.

the dying soil their lungs with final breaths,
unsmelled seasonal swing bands of scent escaping
in the key change from summer to autumn,
from the inflorescent peak to the slippery slope
of reabsorption, of endings, of deaths.

the year will begin again, with
or without us.