A Jar of Poison

A jar holds summer’s peaches, summer’s sun
As if no time has passed: so hold the dream...

– Marly Youmans, Inaugural

“A new nation” – what is that

but for a married man to mutter,

“a new wife”?

Perhaps any man

will conceive with liberty if he can;

but isn't the better part of him

dedicated to the awkwardness

of those bonds which connect him with another,

rather than to any proposition?

A jar of summer peaches, you said,

but maybe it is a jar of poison

we are keeping on our shelves.