Latent Gold
Christopher Moya
Wind in the trees
Makes an ocean of air
As if a nautilus were everywhere.
The tips tossing faintly overhead,
When the husks spend their grain.
The bare chaffs bend chaconne of wintering
Foaming with autumns alchemy
Their boughs eddy
And gracefully pitch their leaves
Their kelly green gone to peach and plum vermillion
Children of winnowing, merrily
They waltz in gales spun amok
And gambol downward toward the bank
Swept into huddles by a breeze
Whispering over creek rocks
Waterworn each a grap pippin newly off the stem
Stone cockles squatting in the spawn
With coats of moss
Whose plackets hug the bog
The darnels dip down
And fish for green tassels
In the watermold cottillion
Cold rot souring the marsh with new spores
When the stones sprout gills
Theyre ready to flower
And lichen new frondsof fungus elsewhere
Daring new rain to wet the peat and flush them out
Trembling, they leap down
Into pools of absinthe.
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