Her azaleas freeze

Penance, she feels,
As she steps timid from house
To patch of dirt.
The wrinkled blooms she casts
Fall euphoric, metaphoric,
Freed of her grimy synthetic hand, welcomed
To a different kind of slavery;
To be enveloped in clutching Earth.

Beneath her muck-coated high-booted feet,
The warm heartbeat, the mother monster sleeps.
Writhing worms, glorious in fat pinkness
Snuffling creatures
Beady blinded eyes searching sightless in
Her stomach, the eye of the storm.
The Gardener fingers her tools,
Cruel instruments, hardly yielding,
Portray some earthier violence with slavish bent
The muck grins; it knows no Master

The interloper stares
Wanting her doughy limbs to sprout green tendrils
Her pearly grin to grow moss,
Decomposition to greenness
Her creaming mud exhalation
Her sighs churn the dirt as she sinks
The iron girl, the metallic crust
Tree absorption
Earth envelopment
Lurching in quiet slumber
Her soil, Mother benevolence

Earth, the blood of centuries