This is the blog form of the original composition. You may also read it as a list on one page.
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Cedar branches wear
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garments fashioned by winter.
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Encrusted, ice jewels
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glitter, bend boughs toward Earth
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who draws them into her heart.
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‘At face value:’
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What you see is what you get.
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Sometimes, only sometimes.
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Take a fifty-dollar bill.
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Choose fine goods, foods to consume.
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Don’t bother to check
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from what sweatshop those shoes came,
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from what grey waters
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grains of rice emerged, to blend
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with rat shit in fine boxes.
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Check out the thin sole,
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what connects you to the earth.
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It has rubber’s feel,
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cushions against rough terrain
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but on wet pavement floors you.
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Mundane examples
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of how nine-tenths lurks below
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whatever surface.
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Learn now, how a shipwrecked mind
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set Sirens’ songs to gunfire.
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Anticipation:
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You know something is coming.
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You sense its goodness.
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Feel its warmth, how it teases
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promises desires, fulfilled.
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A birthday? Christmas?
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The celebration
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as much in waiting,
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in the preparing, as in
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the event, the bows, ribbons.
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Apprehension:
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This time, you feel something near.
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You sense it breathing,
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how it lurks in the shadows,
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clothed in the trappings of dread.
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Illness? A deceit?
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The moment between that point,
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not really knowing,
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and when truth overtakes hope:
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A last chance for innocence.
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But, without either,
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without some foreshadowing:
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Anticipation,
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apprehension, both absent,
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create an ambush that sears.
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Winter’s two faces:
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One turned to Spring, one to Fall.
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A perfect Janus.
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Monday — cloudless, sun-happy;
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Tuesday, a harsh about-turn.
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A cold countenance:
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Centuries of freeze and thaw
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gauge pits,etch deep lines.
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History, climate unmasked,
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etched on rock by winds, by waves.
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It’s alright, okay
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to become so like the sand:
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Wave-weary, sun bleached,
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reduced to grains that glimmer
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as the tides advance, withdraw.
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Resist temptation:
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to read the shoreline as prose
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is pure folly.
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Without plot, beginning, end,
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hear its rhythm, poetry.
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Take aim, sight with care.
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It’s not the calibre of
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love which brings its end.
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Rather, its velocity:
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the speed trust leaves the barrel.
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Too late, the rabbit.
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By one day, the cottontail
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missed the moment when
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fiction conspired with cash
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to deliver chocolate.
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Heat, in abundance;
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‘blue devils,’ a thorn’s excuse
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for garden flowers.
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Flight, immortal
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The boy and his retriever shuttle
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down Rose Crossroad, hemmed by
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poison ivy in autumn scarlet, by squat junipers
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cloaked in white flowers
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The dog, nose to the the ground, surprises a garter sake
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threading through scrub grasses after a toad
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The child looks up into silence
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A trio of vultures soars on spools of air
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The dog, the boy round a bend
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Approach pinions, black as velvet
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Naked, abandoned on the path
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Remnants in a heap
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What once sought death now has found it
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where footprints, pawprints weave with
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tracks of deer, coyote scat, feathers
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a tapestry