SMILE AT THE CHERRY

Friday, April 18, 2025

The burn,
the glory,
the shroud,
the pillar.

Entire worlds built around this fire,
a circle of folks,
warming by the glow of it.

Not everything needs machined,
but it was already,
even before it met me.

Smile at the cherry—
as if it didn’t hang
on the edge of rot,
as if sweetness wasn’t
just another form of
decay
caught in the light.

A brittle frozen string,
breaks at the look of it—
the cursive,
the syllable,
and the entire lyric.

The swirl of atmosphere,
evident by that bright shine,
and all the vapors
clear the air.

My god,
my love,
my illusion to use—
guns and roses,
a classic tome,
a name like any other—
echoes of pop co-opted
on the hippocampus,
remixed
and then spit back out.

The tree remembers
more than the root.
And I—
I taste it
and call it grace.

Still,
we hum it,
around the fire.