If poems were bombs
If poems were bombs, the blown and fallen petal
of the rose would billow like a sail, then rise,
and in a storm of risen petals seize
the bud again. The driven leaves would settle
on the trees like flocks of burning birds and spread
green-feathered wings. Even the fallen sparrow
would find its nest, and where the fluted arrow
shivered to rest, its shaft would glisten red
with blood returning to the wound. The fuse
that lights the poem is the human breath,
the powder some known thing pointing the way
toward what we do not know and cannot use,
like a blind man wandering a blasted heath
homeward in the dark toward what he cannot say.
DL