Perennial

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PERENNIAL


And then, as if it knew that something 

in you had allowed itself to consider


how maybe—after a harvest like that—

this is what arrival tastes like,


the woods behind the house begin to thin,

sheering their adolescent locks


to reveal the bare strip of bypass

which has always been there but was veiled


enough to look over when you moved in,

and you must now look once again


at your failure to be anything more

than a potted plant on the back of a nursery


flatbed roaring for soil somewhere far from this

perennial dance of seed, chance, and wilt.


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