Nation

They say if every lawn was a wild garden 

the nation would start to grow back 

undefined, with high wild grasses  

bending property lines, bowing 

and blurring to the wind 

They say we’d start to hear the rain 

speak meditations into each hand 

each lesson a drum, each drum a reflection  

of water’s skin echoing origins  

outward, outward, outward 

On hollow days, where sprinkler fingers miss 

and miss, our roots climb deeper 

than we’re told to imagine 

past stones, bottles, cathedrals  

collapsed and splayed like ribs 

where you can feel the sprawling 

rhizomatic winds, ancestral tendrils  

loosed and communing 

that inescapable net of freedom  

As our cities sink with power 

we forget where we will go, 

each drop sucked down 

into the ground that keeps 

singing this land this land this land