Poetica Magazine

Always the procreant urge of the world

--- Whitman, Leaves of Grass

For if all flesh is as the grass is

– each swooning culm a throat

laid open to the withering word

and sickling blade of spirit

this precarious flesh perhaps

is also as the sullen stone – the stone

that knows the way each hoofbeat

fills with dread the pebbled road

and flesh is also as the ash the ash

that rises with the thrasher’s cry

in defiance of the stillness of the day

to wander star-like over winter light

and if flesh is as the grass star ash

cry and stone are – so must stone cry

star ash be as flesh – this mortal

life’s relentless excess over death.

About the Author

DB Jonas is an orchardist living in the mountains of New Mexico. His work has appeared in Tar River, Blue Unicorn, Neologism, The Ekphrastic Review, The Decadent Review, Water Wheel, and many other journals. His first collection, Tarantula Season, is scheduled for release in 2023.