When I was a kid, after my parents divorced, my dad worked on a commune in Massachusetts called Montague Farm. This was the real deal: a working farm where I first saw chickens get their heads chopped off, where I first (and last) picked spinach in the sun, and also where there were blond girls named Sequoia running around and piles of anti-nuke comic books sitting on the end tables. My favorite featured a three-legged frog. If anyone has a copy, let me know.

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Sometimes he spent hours
Pulling the thin ribbons of wild chives
From the clasp of earth,
And holding them in front of his face.
Each green vein wandered its traced line
From bulb to tapered tip, until
He brushed the dirt off and bit
The stalk in half, leaving frayed ends
Brushing his lips with sting.

There he’d lay, under the lilac
Bushes that grew tortuous like shadow-figure fingers –
I don’t remember what he saw
In the wild chives hidden in the lilacs
But who can blame him if at that moment
The world was bounded by his body
And even the paths of light down spicy veins
Were open to his understanding.

He stayed for some hours more, hunting
Raspberries, but by then the damage was done.

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