Brown

Desert rain is the reign
Of mud.

The dirt has no roots
To hold it.

Free, it marries water
And crowns it brown.

Not before your death or after
Had our gully run.

Now it is dirt brown
And man-deep.

Now me-without-you
Swims into view:

Plant without roots.
(Lord knows

How the sagebrush does it.)
I was the tree,

It turns out, that grows
On another tree:

Tall but weak in wood,
Obligate

As symbiont.
That stalk,

Mere woody pith,
Nearly a vine,

Itself would never hold
Much wind—

The widower is born again
As a child.

At mid-century
He learns to walk,

Again the class clown
In high school;

Misadventures with girls,
College Bowl

(No one can fucking touch me
In College Bowl)

PhD programs
And startup days—

Ontogeny
Repeats itself

From tap to meristem,
Battering pith

In ice-brown rain,
Iron wind

And useless flood,
Stalk to wood—

Or such at any rate
Goes the theory

Of a brown Christmas.