Young Love in Old Countries

We were vining for the sky
But cut off at the roots
Our calloused romance
Bore a calyx but no fruit.

Old love songs
Copied and pasted on baby faces.
Grandparents’ stories so deep
I mimicked before I knew them
Storm drain oil-thick to the brim
Blood that used to be German.
In a misred stranger’s own old country
Christened Young Love.

Flags planted in parched lands’
Forearm veins.
Floods dammed,
Fires banned.

Flawed laws on grace
Confuse morning rays.
Foggy ancestries
Ring in moss-shut eyes
Named by relativity:

Oregon white oak
Temperate titans’ smoke.
New Jersey,
No mercy.
Wild blackberry,
Unfamiliar, daring,
Then lonesome, despairing.