Seed
The way it came spinning onto the lawn—
the elm trees’ chaffy currency, each piece
with a spot of seed at the center; the katydid-
colored, breeze-littering spindles let fall
by the maples; the squirm of catkins
fattening on the schoolyard poplars;
the way it annually left its smudge
like a bloodletting under the mulberry
in the first weeks of summer:
spring after spring, the same spangling,
smirching rain of it, making way
for yet other excesses—dewed,
swelling, softening to vegetable rot;
the fanged, maculate, pollen-triggering
tiger lily; the bearded rasp and
ripple of the barley; in field after
field, tasseled, seminal, knife-edged,
the green blades’ rustle.