Moccasin Flowers

The poem

All my life, so far, I have loved more than one thing,

including the mossy hooves of dreams, including' the spongy litter under the tall trees.

In spring the moccasin flowers reach for the crackling lick of the sun

and burn down. Sometimes, in the shadows, I see the hazy eyes, the lamb-lips

of oblivion, its deep drowse, and I can imagine a new nothing in the universe,

the matted leaves splitting open, revealing the black planks of the stairs.

But all my life--sofar-- I have loved best how the flowers rise and open, how

the pink lungs of their bodies enter the fore of the world and stand there shining and willing--the one

thing they can do before they shuffle forward into the floor of darkness, they become the trees.