After the old man fell
and broke his hip working in the garden
the shrubs next door grew free,

It was fever that made the world
burn last summer, that afternoon
when I lay watching the sun pour

I was edging along a deer trail
past halfway into a thicket so dense
the tarweed stains never washed out

That year, sea-fog in tufted hanks
spun through the eucalyptus tops
below our attic flat,

Each evening now the ash blue flame
swept from my fingertips
climbing its gas ladder up the flue

Some parents shy away from the body,
but we hush up about the cross—
rereading our daughter the story about Jesus

Roxy lifts her furrowed face and opens
her mouth for another hunk of banana muffin.
Her eyes are matted shut; her white hair wild as Isaiah’s.

Yellow infers from itself papayas and their pulp,
penetrable yellow.
At noon: bees, sweet stinger and honey.

Jesus’s passion is purple and white,
very close to joy.
Purple is tart, it will ripen.

impossible to pick it up. the oily outer coating catches on the kitchen
counter and begs to grow, even where there’s no soil, the ones I did
manage to plant lived for three years—never trees, but the flat leaves