Relocation
This is drought—slur
of days, days, days.
wanting like the hallowed
riverbed wants, like the blinded eye
wants, like the empty womb
for moss to grow up and over,
and inside
to settle in the earth, for soil
beneath the stone to wear
grassless and blitzed
with night crawlers.
to be cool, stationary, filled.
The city names on maps are hooks for the soft lip.
Mine were pursed for the taking.
Then, this place: sunlight strained
through leaves of Japanese maples.
Houses like scrimshaw, carved
and ancient. The language
phonetically mangled, something
the dog drug home, and the dog is me.
Am I kudzu or land the kudzu took?
The land: reduced to the strange swellings
of acres of mummified trees.
The kudzu: burnt to root yet returning,
ravenous to cover, to take.