Parasite Mistletoe

by Bly Gardener

Parasite mistletoe:
Athwart the living bough,
Your jade display of angles
Chlorophyllic tangles
The branchlets underneath,
Assuring viral death.

Those who honor your
Pea prickly contour
Know nothing of the cost
Exacted on your host,
But feed on symbolism;
As you feed on the schism
Between your berries’ gilt,
And cannibal result.

To ease your casual kiss
Requires a death. Is this
Not often the world’s way –
To grasp the momentary
Grace at another’s expense
And think no consequence?

But such sequence, when come,
Is not one of full doom:
The individual death
Only encompasseth
The individual. Strike
The world entire, and like
The well struck deep, crust totters,
To burst with slaking waters.

So with the host you eat:
A thousand-fold, replete
The foliate bevy flowers,
Ever multiplying bowers
Swelling past your blight,
Mistletoe parasite.