FATI D. ASHLEY

Rights & Passages

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I.
Sometimes the trees show their sorrow
            by the way the moss hangs
            in the south
Sometimes you can hear them 
            weep from what they’ve witnessed:

II.
Dreams spoken,
daring the world to let them live  
too often lay
cut down & 
immortalized in murals
cut down &
fading on t-shirts
cut down &
held up on signs 
Cut down &
left for tomorrow’s reaping
Some seedlings barely have a chance
to grow unconfined
leaving legacies to shrivel 
They’re the color of dried blood

III. 
Is it that death wallows in this soil
            disturbing roots 
wrapping them around its body
            like a cold vengeful sleeper?
Is it the poisonous water? 

IV.
Over time, numbers quietly grew, 
trampling over flowers 
to draft new beds and weed out choice
Cloaked, civil engineers hand down warped forks 
from their long robed arms- 
penned infrastructure 
-believing their work a moral 
& life-term duty
Acts like those corrupt and maim imagination
only leaving prescribed possibilities
                   to choke free will & overrun lives that
                              hope to bloom, just a little, 
                                    before they die

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