Revisionist Poetry – “Hymn of the Heap” – Beautiful Detritus, v.4 (Dylanesque)

Winter loosens its grip on the gate,
lets the snow slide off like a bad alibi.
The ground coughs up its old confessions—
knotted string, a split glove, last year’s lie.

There’s a tangle of jute in the belly of the bed,
leaf bones rattling their thin, dry prayer,
a rusted hook humming to the worms,
like it still remembers holding something fair.

The garden don’t care what we call trash.
It takes what it gets and sings it back.
Rain drums on the tin of the broken things,
roots pick pockets from the dead man’s sack.

You call it mess, I call it a map—
every scrap a crooked sign.
The wind’s out here stitching yesterday
into the hems of the green new time.

So I tip my hat to the busted rake,
to the rope that forgot its job.
If beauty’s a trick of the light on the heap,
then I’ve been fooled by worse gods than rot.

Spring don’t come clean. It comes in rags,
mud on its knees, mouth full of birds.
It plants its flag in the leftover heap
and whistles a hymn made out of dirt and words.