Refuse in a Heavenly Mansion
(From Yeats, The Choice)

And buried a vowel in the less-than-fertile soil
where it struggled to swell, hung suspended in mineral streams,

that which held the germ of the story
was carried with devotion over Hibernic hills, woven discretely into sheer red stockings
a kind of double garden path
      on the approach to the radiating-absorbing sun-moon of another day.

A vowel of such little celebration when exhumed by Botero from a stinking cell,
it made us pause (huzzah).

Watching once again as the baited line is cast,
      it’s recognized by its intention, by its weight.
The choice then, to turn from the steaming wriggling vowel towards a tidy nook
or wrestle the beast, bury the bait in the less-than-fertile-soil,
or make for it
a place at the table - as we would for any child or beloved
          no matter how grotesque.

A torpid nod, a luminous question,
both feed the child-vowel.