Into Seed

The maple seed that limps
   down from the sky on
its one desiccated
      and hard-veined wing
battered insect of the spring;

the common dandelion
   holding listlessly
its hundred spiderlings
      with silken hair
and white, orphans soon of air;

the windfall apple's hard
   drop and curl along
her bias, and the smooth
      red haunch turned up
as if to say, come and sup;

here is the crisis of
   ingenuity
and chance, the pilgrimage
      to dirt among
the next year's poems, unsprung.