Boot-heel-sized
masterpiece of bottom-feeding:
there you are, at last.
I peel off wet leaves
after a long winter, find your hooks
deep in my grass.
You are a festering periwig.
You are the cutest canker.
You devour living matter
to keep your skin pink. How gross.
But it’s what I like best about you.
How you hide and grow,
sup under all that snow.
How, once you’re done,
nothing springs from that scalp of soil.
Filth uptick, parts-per-billion pestilence
biding time—you mess
with the program, you chew a hole
in the world, you mean
business, like a missed diagnosis,
or the tumor that, undetected,
milled the wall of my father’s lung
to grist. I could mourn,
but that kind of attitude
gets you nowhere. This is an ode
to mold glued to sod. You take so little space,
inches-wide pockmark, flaw
nature spawns against itself without shame: turf
fatally wounded, awaiting
last unction. I’ve been meaning to tell you
I’m not pissed. My plan
is to let you do your thing,
and your thing is to paw at part of my lawn
for its last bit of health.
Some say you draw a pall
over these grounds. I don’t.
I love the example you set, antimatter’s
earhorn of plenty. I feel it
in my gut: you’ll be there for me.
I won’t reseed. I’ll give you
the room you need. Please stay.
You’ve earned your sick day.
