Indian Summer

The sun rests on its stem
like a cardoon left
in the garden to fester.
The sun blanched white
and then it kept

day and night equal
as halves. Termites bubbled
from a stump. A cedar
grew yellow, orange, then red.
Its swollen wood

took the stick
you propped in an entrance.
One simply swallowed
and the termites emerged
all over again,

wearing wings
like the transparents.
From a hole
in Rimbaud's rotten leg
termites flew in numbers.

They were ignorant as cities
and indifferent as gasses.
Whether the cobalt sky
lay in ribbons
or swollen fat

we were caught at the heart
of a tree stump.
These were our termites
born from a trunk
wearing see-through

wings by which
our small hot god
shows himself
to be ignorant of us
and our names.

Copyright © 2009 Judith Skillman All rights reserved
from J Journal: New Writing on Justice
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission