Sweet garden, sweet tangle of herbs

Sweet garden, sweet tangle of herbs
sweet April without rains, then coming

sweet basil, sweet scented fingertips
sweet unfolded afternoon

I would love to be sweet
Jesus who withers a tree

forsythia, lilac, mock orange, red twig,
ceanothus in the wrong region

opened fists of flowering
opened eye of unnaming

sweet taste of the compost
in the stems of violets, in chives

inside my mouth a bittering and dearth
suckled need for my losses

sweet muddled creed of the bloodroot
sweet delicate tongue, licking my fingers clean