Not Like A Figwort Poem by Robert Ronnow

Not like a figwort but not an aster, either. Could he be a
      buttercup
with sepals, no petals, but sepals like petals? Alan is a
      bluebeech,
an ash if his books sell. Quick shake hands. Zach's bald
      ok, a
magnolia, cone-like fruits a bridge to his Neanderthal
      father.
When did Ben become a chestnut lover? It's said
      women are practical
but there's much variation in their leaves, ovaries. Many
      are older,
stumps, snags for peckers and porcupines, teachers,
      feeders, seeders.
What did the wood thrush sing
                            teaching its young thrush meanings?

Sometimes a mushroom. Did you know such fungi are
      mostly protein?
Mushrooms could replace meat, and the dead, the
      dead's feet, white
as pyrola, could replace the living. Well, we worry. Will
      we, bad luck,
be extinguished. Denizens of convenience stores think
      who cares, will
I beat the reaper? Hope sempiternally springs. Things
      rarely clear
as sun among the sundews. Eating huckleberries from
      your kayak.
What Paulinaq says is live your life and then your death
      until nothing's left.
Then thou shalt be bereft
                        of the heavy sackcloth of the soil, soul.

Said to Mrs. Buckthorn: good poets imitate, great poets
      steal.
I think she's more an apple tree. Or pear. Good to eat,
amenable to loving. Rose or Ericaceae, the differences
      make the
difference. Emerson and Rylin Malone are dead. The
      dead
are dumb, the dust won't speak. And this deep, dull and
      dark
blessing's a horizontal reserve. Moonlit. Mr. Hickory is
      actually a yellow birch,
holy and exfoliating. Busy spilling seed on the surface of
      the snow.
Teaching essay
           writing, algebra, earth science, branches of government.

I would be a cypress, cedar, branches calligraphy
      brushes, divorced from desert.
It takes a divorce for one to know one knows no one,
      not only one's wife
but your very sons who will always choose the open
      flower bud.
Good, as they should. Their bones are your bones,
      strange bones, and a
strange selection of their words. They are Uvularia
      sessifolia (wild oats)
and Polygonatum biflorum (Solomon's seal) . They
      outlast the holocaust
or not, they're made of matter. These windows need a
      good cleaning.
Leaf-raking. Dusting for ghosts. Ah, sweet peace,
      perfect rest, there are
no ghosts
    adults are trees, teens are shrubs, and children are herbaceous.