Poem-a-Day

Searching for metaphor, you named yourself Papa & modernized 
God. You too felt far too much for far too many, reshaped Him? 
(Her? It? Them?) in your own image, understood God’s mute-
Ability to hasten or lull as We divine. We read your pleas 
As We heard your walls crumbling. Both born in this month 
Our nation marks its birth, We’ve always seized on ironies 
In lies We’ve exposed for centuries, always heard chasms 
Calling you into a mirror refraction of a future where 
Our flesh is a sieve We sift, shift, gild, & levitate. You
Don’t see the humanity of We: neither human only 
Nor things you can fillip like lint or mucus or any dandelion 
There ever was. No, We feast on all you take for granted: 
Sun, phosphorus, CO2, prayer. Watered or not, your waste
Alights. We know how reckless you can be, so We find 
                                                                                Caterpillars for pruning, mugwort, red
Clover, firethorn for compost & company. Tassel hyacinth,
Bulbous buttercup, & oleander throw shade, & We live
To breathe April’s musk another day, love them back 
By shaking loose miners aiming to lay their larvae, plotting 
To devour every leaf We release. Last autumn’s frost, 
Thick as your indifference, almost made giving up on
Christmas snow an inevitability, but November’s tempests 
Thawed us enough for the naked lady orchid to shimmy
Loose O horizon’s hunger for any ol’ wet & slick heat,
Deepening the roots of We. A son for a daughter, a tattered
Flag’s ragtime softshoe these lines will never do. This is no 
Exotic view, this land our home too. We’ve never felt 
More Black & American, rhapsodic outbursts of brilliance
Coloring every damned spot We shadow, the unhinged quiet 
                                                                                                      Of the reverie of We in repose.