Demurrage

Demurrage 7/16

Not sure what they were selling
            some basket of fruit tinged with poison

that would make us all see saints
            floating in the rafters of our minds

I ask where the tree was
            who harvested who cultivated

was the tree a fusion of cuttings
            or pure unmolested thoroughbred

Will the knotted branches make good walking sticks
            so the mud of history can be crossed

Those gray-haired men floating in the ether
            of our collective minds

What are we to make of those empty promises
            those hanging grammars

those dangling parts of speech they left behind