VEGETATION MADE PUBLIC

VEGETATION MADE PUBLIC

Embarrassed at first blush, shy vegetation made public.
Nice hot vegetables, such confirmation made public.

A Boolean brew simmers: AND, OR, NOR, NAND, NOR, XOR.
Sepals, petals, night sprouting gurgitation made public.

Leave us alone hissed lichen fungi one point three billion
years back: acid-washed prestidigitation made public.

Snowball Earth. Cambrian Explosion. Before dinosaurs,
before Dick Cheney. Time’s hallucination made public.

Stem-breaking labor of decay and fade, slaving to make
oil, gas and coal, a swampy taste sensation made public.

Her molecular fingerprints paw us, her lignites rouge
dawn’s sultry stare. Ah, brooding incubation made public.

If you drove out to the desert thirty, forty million
years ago—cacti, no beer: deprivation made public.

You could hear it coming in the air that night…In-A-
Gadda-Da-Vida. Frequency modulation made public.

Organ pipes, prickly pears, barrels, chollas, saguaros sing out
through jammed choruses of rain. Jubilation made public.

No one to sniff, no one to draw, to shoot, to catch, to hide,
to starve, to see dark field illumination made public.

Areoles spring spines. Glochids lance and parry. Winners stick.
Binary arithmetic operation made public.