Joseph Brad Kluge
from letters left unanswered
 

Passover Harvest

Part I

a cokewold in a starlings nest

coveting the sacred
the life you bear is
is become a placenta
of sin
a placenta of emptiness

an afterbirth forever unbourne
gestating the hunger that will
never come to term bloating long
after the life  you’ve festered
to create love  out of a life
as a farmer would weep
starving for lack of seed.

And so you phuck the barren
earth with an empty staff –

a single glimmer of green
whose spring promise
must fight for life and sun
trapped beneath your shadow
bent greedily over your creation
of such selfish intent.

II
inevitably

you will leave or be left

embittered   
                          
the shell licked clean   
 in a rush to scatter   
 the evidence   
that lies here   
crushed and sharp   
beneath my step   
pressed into spring's   
living rot   

blazing leaves   
now a dark   
squiggling  mulch   
a feather, a bit   
of bone   
oozing upward   
rooting me here -   
each moment's   
tryst  - carved   
initials burned  
into my   
bark   

the smell   
of rotting leaves  
is faintly erotic -  
the decay  
so warm and intimate   
 a caress  
 tongued deep  
penetrating  
between each toe   
with so soft a scent   
so sad and faintly   

lingering  
scent of you   
drifting upward   
 along my limbs   
into the nest   
i would cradle you   
until the clock's cry   

frightens you   
to flight   
unsure wings   
driven with   
too eager a hunger   
to appreciate   

II
inevitably


perhaps too clever   
to wonder   
at   
nature or intent   
able only to savour   
so rich a flavour   
of gorse   
interring so exotic   
a meal   

cheated   

laid forth   

mistaking dreams   
too tender   
to engender.   

 -jbkluge   
16june1998   
rev16nov2005