Heirloom Cemetery

The future ripens in the past
The past rots in the future
-Anna Ahkmatova


What I have is a medal, a ripened plum,
small enough to call my own. What my son
will know: tenable but not edible. Illegible as a home.

Mine is a purple veil, the present re-gifted,
a mixture of blue veins and oxygen red
wakes the sky and mind, awaiting the present:

tenable but indelible, as illegible as blame dusts
the earth. What branch lowers without fruit?
The aroma is withholding. The aroma without full context.