This is a thistle
in a pasture on
the slope of a valley
down to the river
and up again
to Sainte Néomaye,
old stones, where
once lived a master
who once received kings.
One imagines these things.
This is last year’s thistle
and long grass dry now
and thorns,
and these stones
are fossils of
first fish and dinosaurs
when once this was ocean
and there were no kings.
But this, this old this,
this is a thistle.
