Looking Over

Clover:

On a brain-gray day,

                                      he lay on the hill-slanted solar

array with a southern exposure,

toes in the clover

                                mixed in with what are these

pentagrammatic sprays

of pinnate leaves.

                                No clover

here has four leaves:

to each one he says

I have seen you before

                                          in the nuclear hazard

symbol and then again (as

again slants backward)

before that, as nothing but clover

                                                             when childhood was not yet over

and everything was symbol therefore

nothing was.

T. Zachary Cotler.