Breathing hard
love was unearthed
by her yard and its sweaty labor
and then layers of paint
built a textured vision
balanced but blooming
with such wild and beautiful weeds!

And compared to her art
my poems were lame
privately constructed
voyeuristic fissures
of a slow death’s unraveling

….compared as well
to those great poems of the centuries
which I read these days on my kindle
by lamplight.

And yet
compared to her art
…but nothing can compare
to such passion alive

…and this
is the joy
of my throat and my breath
and my life.