Blood and Guts T.V.

Today I Gathered the recycling.l I threw away the bin Went back inside Turned on the TV Blood and Guts TV Thanks for tuning in The screen showed a place Past the hearth and home Past plush yard, garden where marjoram and tomatoes grow Past the thyme-weighted garden gate A place I'd never known A place I'd never known Far beyond The sound safety of a small estate Still beyond The foot-pounded path Frond-stalk-framed walkway Still Far Beyond Blood and Guts TV Thanks for tuning in Here past the relentless devil's walking stick And skin-kissing nettle Briar-wrapped honey locust Battle-hardened thick scarified wall of scarcely rambling teeth Venom-laden with poison ivy Past the halls of grating hell Past the halls of grating hell Even beyond In secret spaces the fey race make faces And braid through lush leaves on lace-wings epochs Of labyrinthine magic pathways Full of dead-ends Split ends Burnt ends Means-to-an-ends Mostly gathering dust and bones Vigilance is key Lest fingertips cease tracing Pathways in the shimmer And collapse to tickling the loam Blood and Guts TV Thanks for tuning in After all these Terrible treacherous tribulations A great tree Stolid and storied Each branch stretching With different leaves Pointing at the fey The would-be interloper Itself The heart of all things Blood and Guts TV Thanks for tuning in The rivers in its roots Flow into every Eyelash and leaf of grass Every shell and bill Heron feather and hawk talon Flowing deep into the planet Which holds the tree upright And gives it somewhere to stand The tree may seem Immense and uncaring But it loves most of all The children with which The world is heavy Blood and Guts TV Thanks for tuning in