After the Rain
Found in my garden after the rain,
I consider the flint’s grey, sloping planes
rubbed under thumb, darkened with oil.
Meant to spiral, the good side, drive deep
the rough? And kills—many or none?
Lost only to thrust upward, this tongue
churning soil’s mad-quest of blood-musk
and strike not found among alchemic bone
perhaps will draw shape from my watch—
or worry this map away, its mystery never met.
By whose hand and where made? Under
what sun, what tree? Master, beginner—
and pleased? Or did simply finish and toss
it aside—hate the process of loss guaranteed
or worship the labored foretaste of blood?
Gathered and blessed at the end of the day,
dismissed as the stay of a heart not his own,
I know I will never release its true purpose,
impress its feral thumbprint on your neck—
lest you draw too close in my hour of worst labor,
the fires of my history gathered in loss,
guaranteed struck on heart’s throne.
Matt Dennison’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Verse Daily, Rattle, The Inflectionist Review, DIAGRAM, The New York Quarterly Magazine, Modern Haiku, The National Poetry Review, Bayou Magazine, Redivider and Cider Press Review, among others. His fiction has appeared in ShortStory Substack, THEMA, GUD, The Blue Crow (Aus), Prole (UK), The Wondrous Real and Story Unlikely.