• Vol. 07
  • Chapter 12
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Becoming Botanical


I have dispensed with
tearable skin,
breakable bones
and leaky blood.

Now I shower in cloudbursts
and sleep in shifting soil
amongst the bright eyes
of tiny stones.

My veins flow with rainwater,
and my rivered limbs meander
through boulderless channels.
Soft-quilled tendrils reach for life
from rippled rings
and sway for the bloom of each day.

I slip on the dropped petals of buttercups,
golden belts of bending corn
and sun-striped sweaters,
and, glow-softened,
bask in a comfortable slump,
becoming something other.

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Becoming Botanical

The trees are reassuring grandfathers
whose fingers entwine beneath me.
They remind me that
my walls are birdsong
and my roof is not there,
that I have sprung from
and am part of the earth.

My new growth is dewy
and malleable,
plungeable,
and

only sky fills the spaces.

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