JEANNE LARSEN

The Garden of Sex

This earth is sown
with salt. And it blossoms

wholly, beatified now by a thing
borne in the dust, undeniable,

tender. Its stark
rain still intimates.

It soothes and insists
that it never will stop. Why,

of course this ground trembles,
relentless. This wild garden grips

the stem of the brain. It
yields up the soft

blood's opaque, wet, spent
fruits. It looks out

past your skin's windowed
leaves. At the downpour’s

warm eye, this breathing terrain
simply swells. Rhizomes spread out,

eager and curiously calm.
What holds them's no more

than surrender that knows
it too will be fed.