Only Thistles Will Do

                         1    
I eat thistles to do away with 
my hunger for green life,

capturing in pixel pricks what 
my prying eyes can not evade.

The forest offers no inheritance,
every branch has its best name

 
                          2
I wish to learn and know the work 
songs of smaller, silent things,

blend not into the shrubs but rocks,
the mutes of this dry and dying land,

join the procession of farmers mourning 
the lost voice of closeness to the earth.

                          3
These hands that  no longer clasp or 
knead are but the repeated gestures

of an uvulating tongue that knows
that the egg in a pool of oil will

yield a dry dough of double thistles
in the purple slanted sunsets to come.