Blooms

after Myles Taylor's "Poem Envisioning the Opposite of Violence"

Where patriots frogmarched and shot traitors,
where gun barrels turned and turned,
above once proud medals dulled by dirt
and rib cages simmered to bone,
rows of cherry trees gossip in the wind.

Beneath a million daffodils
nine hundred mercenaries think nothing,
roots finish the gaps in their camouflage,
soil silos their gun barrels,
rust claims the eyelets of their jackboots.

On a carved pillar
a swallow calls to its lover
as generations of red flowering vines
obscure the revengers' names
and a young river
traces it all
in inches.

Higher,
a fox swims through the clouds,
tasting the sky,
without a thought of falling.