Mother’s garden, secret and circumscribed,

grooms the smell of well-trodden moss to

cloak the moonscaped sliver of silver beds.

Scents of life teem with rotted death and swell.

 

Immortal in what is left, impervious

to the fleeting beat of passing feet

stays against an earth already swollen

with the burden of time and pause.

 

Pregnant mosquitos lick the cool breath

from pools stagnated at the heart of a

jungle gone mad upon itself. Slaked and still

impassioned, they rise from their birthing

 

to claim their will, a thirst for blood, the

urge as ancient as the snake that coils

itself around the river moon and beasted

sun. In stealth, they swarm as one, bent

 

to the singular purpose, drink or die, but

live to perish in the criss-cross of days.

The lizard scampers across the heated

rock of indifference and releases the slip-glide

 

of slithered tunge, snatching the sole vector,

a morsel of succulent dread, life in destruction.

He awaits the next, sunning leathered apparel

on rocky crag at the foot of watery splash.

 

Framed by greened jungle, leaves switch

in a breeze that alerts him to the coming cool

of night. He alights into the nothing and every-

thing disappears into the solitary garden.