Paradise
Andy Stallings
Every paradise performs its
profundity by bedtime. The
actor’s staged accent made
the actual children ecstatic,
a broom passed over granite
just before rain. Music
withheld from such heavy
air fell audible/inaudible.
The garden path had a crystal
structure with properties
of growth, but as the message
carved into the shell of a
souvenir turtle kills the turtle
in time, so did that pattern
of clearings wither the plants.
The quantity of hope, like
the narrative of effort, fits
snug within the magnitude
of chance. Given time, I’ll
clarify the wine. But even
birdsong can’t train
the climbing vine.