Withered hand weathered black by the seasons,
ignorant of comfort in the garden,
hopelessly in love with the dirt, the soil,
sun burnt flesh, year after year, four reasons,
art, beauty, pleasure, science, and logic,
the children point out, as only children,
traipsing through the woods, coming to a boil, hot beyond belief, attempt to make sense,
desperate to understand rhetoric,
empty vessels, dried sponges, and blank slates,
organic biochemical machines,
watching the withered hand, under intense
ecological conditions, touch fates
incongruous rules to bend nature's genes,
sincerity hides behind this facade,
limping, one leg broken, holding a cane,
not manufactured, carved by his own hands,
lifts his body, from plot to plot, Haddad
on his hands and knees tends tomato vines,
touches his forehead to cool his warm brain,
the heat from the sun, under his hat, brands
oysters over his skull, covered with sores,
challenged by difficulties, Haddad dines
classically, as a bachelor, alone,
humbled by ghosts, his family, all dead,
hungry to remember, how the bull gores
apart the twins, their moans, he hears a drone,
after his bride commits suicide, thread
notably cut, fate follows one rule, fines
never occur, the fee for life is death,
green thumb, never a moment to forget,
gardening was his way to breathe, the bores
entertained him until he left, his breath
excited by weather, hot, cold, and sweat.
"What does not change / is the will to change"
from "The Kingfishers" by Charles Olson
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