For a beautiful evening alone on an avenue
bordered with nothing but trees
standing sentinel,
all grass, each gutter, mined
with the essence of horsechestnut,
a smooth brown nut, warm as cognac,
encased in its green violence.
Some brave squirrels have been at them,
not deterred by this hedgehog
of seeds. Scattered everywhere,
hollowed prickly pods
and random pieces, apparently sliced,
wedges of lime rind,
the fruit gone where? into belly of coon
or rodent, into shit at the roots.
I’ve known wind to play
one leaf more than another,
a left handed melody
not composed by nuns,
that mossy stone of the pubis,
its music stand.
Horsechestnuts bombard their green
comets against concrete.
I want their vegetable sex,
in capsules, mapped, but arcane
as illustrations for subatomic particles,
the meiotic explosion for which the world
is loved.
A monarch, an autumn leaf,
garnered by flight,
glides higher than all branches,
that life, like an aspen leaf,
can play itself
without the urgings of air,
is true.
A sinking sun soft-pedals a last
cool but colourful kiss,
horsechestnuts in the hand
darkly ringed as mature trees.