Yellowwood & Yew

…and taking his father’s hand
he tried to lift it from Ephraim’s head…

Yellow woods array in patterns that repeat,
Entangling brittle-branched zigzags of limbs
Lost in familiar double-crosses, split
Like lineages. At issue, the names
Of cladrasis: the older lutea
Withdrawn as merely colored circumstance,
While golden heartwood finds kentuckea
Observe a land of stated permanence.

Old Jacob rested life, thus, his wrestling hands
Declaring Ephraim before Manassas –
Selecting Joseph’s second-born son as
Yews choose to eulogize: each bough depends
Earthward, piercing graveyard flesh, wintered bones
Withdrawn as Yahweh’s own death-interred bones.

Xmas Rose (Christ Herbe)

Behold as you see, both you and your lands
belong to the Pharao. Take seed and sow the fields.

X-mas rose infiltrates Lenten gardens,
Making Christmas unwind Easter’s rebirth
And torture expectations with silence –
Such are the seasons still beneath the earth.

Rising late, you’re early enough to last
Our winter’s cracked and cankered calendar.
Slowly your striking petals break the fast
Eternity’s observed in time’s empire.

X too marks the garden spot where sorrow bore
Her benefice. Time’s famine brought her low
Evoking flowers from tears. A tiny hand
Reached for, drawing up the black hellebore,
Beholding gifts received with debts to owe,
Enriching Joseph’s seed with promised land.

Xmas Berry Trees

God sent me before you into Egypt
for your preservation…

X-mas berry trees take the world by storms,
Moving through mango groves and everglade,
Ahead of hurricane’s surging tide –
Successfully florid in invasive terms.

But before this Hollywood berry came,
Emaciated winter, withering thin,
Remembered its December with famine,
Recusing claims to true a new land’s name.

Youth’s fountain ages with each season’s promise.
Thus Ponce De Leon’s Pascua Florida
Renews its tropic tropes with yuletide flora.

Each storm warning blows with signs of Christmas
Endowing violence with nativity –
So Joseph’s virtues weathered sovereignty.