I've been hiding from this for quite some time.  Planting pens and pencils in the garden of my desk, using loose scraps of paper for soil.  I've been letting the ink dry, letting the lead dull. Doing what I can to put poetry in a corrugated field behind me.

But early this morning, tending tall stalks of education and responsibility.  Cutting my arm on their blade thin skin.  I noticed in the valley of a row, a small bud was bursting.  Peeling its four leaf frock off I saw colored shadows.  Not a mirror of what we are, but color enough to denote what we are telling ourselves to be.  Holding the fruit like a tiny crown I sat beneath a hollow oak.  I was so absorbed with taking small bites of my new royalty, I didn't notice the ants as they slowly built their mound around me.