Fig, Folded

Lash everything irredeemable to the ficus

with muscle. Use the flexor digitorum brevis

from the arch of my right foot.

This is how what’s grounded gets hitched

to the rooted, everything cramped

into place and contemplative. Tight

striations might as well be bindings

to Bodhi as body. Why not dump this tired mind

at the foot of a tree, aerial roots

less caustic than an unanswered calling — 

or perhaps this is it, to sit, to ponder, to ask:

what violated cunt, what unhappy gasp,

what sad spat, and toppling building

left us blooming untoward?

Who puts flowers on the inside of a fig

except the injured or the bereft?

The ones who hankered hard

and failed to do anything but live

lush and fallible? What regret is: bark

or bitch. The world succumbs to beauty

even now, in the throes. The sky is dark

and hidden behind branches, cephalic

veins clotted with grief. Hush now,

finally. All the face can do is flush, sympathetic

nervous system, visible horror of wounded

and wounding. All inflorescence remains safe

inside that place the mind opens up pear-­shaped

and vast: the body of every lover is unattached

to hurt or hope, falls in its own field of daffodils,

to curl fetal with singular prowess or glut.