Reverse Economy
BY EMMA DE LISLE
When I think this, You might still be hiding
in your cranberry bogs, a bog, a garden
kind of, we used
to drive past them
somewhere between Foxborough and
Walpole and you could see that red
shudder through the gaps
in the trees, fall trees,
they kept throwing their yellow on me,
on my mother’s warm skin
in front of me, bright
and fast and blinking—I was still
in a booster seat then, l didn’t know
you could flood the land like that. The bog
was a bog and that crush of blank buds all
it could be good for,
bobbing in their dirt-caved rectangle,
I have not touched below them like I thought
I would, I am in
the water, oval cells gemmed together
in clots, their unity, swollen
river, bright rinds firming
like that’s it, matter’s just
excess, like you could jam every vein full
of one thing. Limiting You
is loving. Prove me
wrong. All right maybe You didn’t create him, so what,
but what does beget mean to You
then, imitator
of us, for
us—You break
a bloom here, forth
a frill there, water
-lily roped to the bog-bed as though
artificial, for the sake of the next
artificial, lariat, brilliant
flush of green piercing last year’s mulch, furled wick
in the fine cup, velvetseed, You live
in your garden, don’t
You, it’s windy, and you apprehend
good there, You make it
sensible, this leaf
underfoot.
