That vile stench has risen once more.
Fields lain fallow with ash and bones,
that last witness buried, now bleach intolerant,

take to their long and dormant seed,
revive a reviled germination and brute harvest,
heedless of the hand, the plow,
the urgent need of remembrance grown.

In sanguine rain through sag wire,
this clod dirt percolates acrid low-lying plumes,
flag-twisted and spun over those indolent airs
before a languid sun, and these now gathered shoots
split our once fertile soils by color, petal and stone.

Before this lurching mob of vine,
among this tangled noxious fear, we,
the common aster will find no ground
to bloom, our wild and boundless bounty,
sorted, refused, mangled in white insolence
and in the poisoned ivy strangling grain.

Image: Siebe Warmoeskerken on Unsplash