Discern.... Poem by RIC BASTASA

words are grasses
they cover the dead
and make us a green patch of plains
and rise up
for hills dressed for a beautiful gaze
of the sun

discern then
for i make a lot of grass gardens
underneath
you keep on thinking what i must have buried
guessing
about dead frogs and chickens and even
bodies of lovers
perhaps (but this is all murderous
and too harsh
for me, for i am as you know
a man of peace
and the law)

i have lots of grass gardens and discern from them
the women that stand there
and all those who love me from the beginning of
my poem
and the end of those plots and stories
that i have long told you

i am not that wicked and witches hate me
for all these
i have only love to offer
and they all love me in return without even
those gardens of grass
those words that
conceal
those that you have not understood and
cannot kill