A chill like chunks of ice
Clotting the current, water
Clinging to water
(If water could feel it)
For dread;

Wind wrestles with wind in the trees --
Air plunged into the seat of the heart
And escaped with a gasp --
Rotten boughs rasp.

The graves of small creatures
Where the worms feast:
Little clumps of dirt
So the land looks like
Someone planted it
Recently; the pain grew,
Inching its way
Under the skin,
Which broke into mounds.

What is growing?
What has come to root,
Red as a boiling beet?

The chalky cliff is watching plains
Which are nothing more than a plane
Of barren earth, plain of all but dust
Tarrying in the wind: the trachea was such a desert.

Old oaks ruin to earth;
Fish skip like stones across the beach,
Barbed with a hunger of steel;
Vultures pick out a livid string
Of satisfying flesh;
Mushrooms and moss clog the beating
Pores of the forest eager to grow.