If poems were bombs

If poems were bombs, the blown and fallen petal

of the rose would billow like a sail, then rise,

and in a storm of risen petals seize

the bud again.  The driven leaves would settle

on the trees like flocks of burning birds and spread

green-feathered wings.  Even the fallen sparrow

would find its nest, and where the fluted arrow

shivered to rest, its shaft would glisten red

with blood returning to the wound.  The fuse

that lights the poem is the human breath,

the powder some known thing pointing the way

toward what we do not know and cannot use,

like a blind man wandering a blasted heath

homeward in the dark toward what he cannot say.

                                                         DL