Cannabis Psalm

Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it
And whispers, ‘Grow, grow.’
                                             —The Talmud

After the snowmelt, the cracked bucket
by the potting shed, filled with last year’s dirt,
swelled in the spring heat.  Two leaves
on a tender stem:  after a brutal winter—
in spite of it—reseeding.  Later that summer

she grows taller than you, bushes out,
a happy Indica, stalk as thick as a cat’s tail.
The hospital bracelet dangles
from your frail wrist as you reach
to rub her leaves, and I cannot

read the quiet map of your face.  Like you,
she is something that arches for the palm
of the sun, and while you sleep, slinks
under the medicine eye of the moon,
gathering her pharmacy.  We smoke

the holy kola buds over the devouring
tumors of your blackened body,
an unspoken acceptance hanging
in the perfumed air.  All I know is nothing
is a mistake in this world, that she is something.


*This poem originally appeared in Macabre Magazine (print).
*It also appears on Snakeskin:  http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~simmers/175psalm.html