"One Word"

Late upon the grooves
of flaking summer, shredded

couplets pile beneath a glaring
lack of star. Unspoken

is one word dangling
like rotten fruit upon a limb

waiting to become earth again
among the hyacinth

and the peppered moss, between
the humid whistle of cicadas

where fingers move to tear
a name – two letters to a scrap –

a name and every ugly iamb quilled
waiting for that word to drop,

to flutter through the spaces
we have known and shatter

into soil, a billion silver pinpricks cast
against the black matter of the earth

bright against the endless dark.
Sown once

it could flower in its proper season

cascade against the glaring lack of star.