WHITE ANTS IN A TAR POT

Spillage of green theater
soldiers returning, but not all at once,
old guardrails wrapped in vines
stone slanting walls, moss ripped,
webbed tendrils soft with dirt
there are no skeletons
anywhere in this afternoon

Banquet was a wrung number
ruffled closets
burials move on without meaning
garden circuits open to the newspaper
closing their dimensions down
salt on a shovel

Pea pods will still carry the snap
of firm time, from a vat
or platforms of terra farmed
soil, conservatories where a certain curse
is heard less and less.