Tangible Erasure

Blue smoke blooms in the tunnel
like a flower one can taste, smell, and touch.

It grows in the world where trees grow
out of textbooks on once-solid floors.

Dead rivers run past banks of bathers
who enter the water to avoid Hell.

Abandoned bags and razors bob in the ocean,
resisting the acid bath it’s become.

Tangible erasure, this smoke is our lotus flower,
rising from oak leaves and birch logs

but not mud.