Circa

Atlantis first belonged to the desert –

this is one of the many preposterous
inconsistencies you have me conceiving
in my drained-of-saneness mind –

I see a palm tree grow out of a pond

where the year’s rain fell and collected
with a dwarf stump that won’t measure
up to its full quasi propensity of tallness

and growing just enough length to be
able to leave a little water un-parched
around it, I imagine, that will fill

a chalice or, perhaps, two at least;
a few years ago I had seen a similar tree
grow out of an identical hole, counting

the number of leaves that fell by will

against a weather that tried pulling it down;
it was a despondent, dispirited desert then,
a pile of sand in motion, in migration

relentlessly, as the dunes thinned away
into skeletal terrains of a flat, stilled state
when Atlantis had sunk back into the hole

from where it had first emerged, the tree
showed no signs of existing, like branches
martyred of their leaves became branded

Circa

as barren. You have left my mind
in an entropy of approximations
from having to remember everything

too correctly, I don’t know how to tell
the correct time anymore.