To Drown in Honey

Now the leaves rush, greening, back. Back now,
the leaves push greenward.—Some such song, or
close to. I forget the most of it. His voice, and
the words pooling inside it. And the light for once
not sexual, just light. The light, as it should be . . .

You can build for yourself a tower to signal from.
Can become a still life. A slow ruin. You can
walk away. They all say that. Sir, I see no way

out of it. I have put my spade to the black loam
that the mind at one moment lets pass for truth,
at the next, oblivion. I have considered. I know
what's buried there: emptiness and renunciation and
ash, and ash . . . Why, then, so suddenly—overnight
almost—all the leaves again? Why now, rushing back?

-- Carl Phillips