The Purpose of a System is What it Does {2}

mantle-made home lickwrit with / why
we don’t know / the lines – we know long
to hold – lines a list of time, list
both edge & desire, fucking
want with all its shards, sift, silt, still

below/ converting abyss
magmatic thirst, iron drawn
shell & scales to shove these toxins
else, hot opulence / not nothing
sacred, of course – dark fissures built

whether tree love happens every
spring depends / before they bloom
agree*, before now – mineral, mast
years, choices – in every bearing
miles between / salt our mutual

curl of lip / to tell whose hungry
hunts, whose smooth grazes, who would furl
for – pelagic papery wist
delineate by light the thing
named haunt call again, again call.

*words lifted from “the hidden life of trees” by Peter Wohlleben