The Confidence Man and The Garden, A Parable

The confidence man comes
To wet the evil flowers of a drying garden —
Tended yesteryear with prideful care —
To liven old, gray brambles,
Twisted branches of a dormant discord
Between the fruit tree seeds
and the crooked spines
That war for golden sun.

The confidence man plucks
On crumbling webs of pestilence
To spread the poison spores
That waken on the vintage bark,
As once again white-winged flies
Glass-fingered mites
Suck on the last green sap.

The confidence man smiles,
Peers through bright-banded eyes
And smacks his plump rose lips
That savor in this barren scene:
“Blooms of deadly nightshade, too,
Must grow,” he says; “they surely make
Fine vegetation.”

Not far behind they squirm extatic
Beneath the fragile shadow
Of his scheming rodent hands:
Those hungry for the ripe red berries
Of a bitter age,
Fruit they saw fit but for themselves,
Yet all who ate them perished
In the darkness.