Yellow has always been the promise,
but the bud is sallow green
until one morning, a torn stalk
is all that’s left—gnawed off,
its great, prickly eye.
When the Cyclops lost his
to a hot, sharpened stake,
he’d been eating men like seeds.
They didn’t know who would be next.
In a story of blame, everyone hungers.
Even the cave has a mouth.
The unfolding is over,
this is the moving on: a bloom
inside the belly of a leaping deer.