Fidelity
by Nick Morale



How does beauty endure
in this devouring
of kind upon kind
everything feeding
and fed upon

so that colors of being
thrive somewhere?

In this we have a root
for the intolerable riot of things.

The larva eaten by spores
giving spring seed
from inside their own dying
on flowering hilltops.

We don't know this kind of giving
where the forms of our sweetness
are lost in pain.

We don't know
how the bird's wing
and the blade of grass
cease to amaze us

for they laid her crust
on top of her curves
melted bones
poured over a heart-beat.

She waits

to wet her children's feet.

And this is our hope in barrenness
that a stroke of sun
could blister our minds
into a repose

where the hill becomes green again.





Illya's Honey Literary Journal

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