Green Thumbs

Sometimes, it’s a poisoned hemp:
the bile-coloured moss, cross-stitched
in the humps and furrows of an old orchard.
Buzzies are the brown, loose ends of threads;
blackwoods, the rough of cheap saucepan scourers,
the silver wattles daubed with yellow flocking.

Sometimes, I am poisoned with it.
I slump in front of the fire
and it doesn’t thaw what is cold inside.
Burning-cold inside, a fever of day-after-day:
breakfast/ mailbox/ tea;
three meals, the middle one never filling.

Let this cup pass from me:
this goblet bleeding with winter.