Lichen Season

Get down eyeball to speckles
With autumn stones in the shade.
This is their growing season.

Cooperating blotches
Of two or three kinds of life,
Drab and pretty prophecies—

One day we’ll have reversed them.
We’ll separate selves from you.
You’ll go your way. We’ll go ours.

Here and there, in shade and sun,
The remaining symbionts
Of bodies and languages

Will still spread out quiet lives,
Stained crusts carpeting boulders,
This old way of doing things.