The Good and the Gone-to-Seed

 
Water won’t allow a lake for long  
before the river  
breathes again. 
 
Ruins watch us, weathered, by now  
only bones: no roof, no 
catch-basin barrel, just windows 
and doorways to a gulf below. 
 
But it still rains on both the good 
and the gone-to-seed  
as one true equity.

L. Ward Abel’s poems have appeared in hundreds of journals, he writes music, and he is the author of three full collections and ten chapbooks of poetry,  including American Bruise (Parallel Press, 2012),  A Jerusalem of Ponds (erbacce-Press, 2016), and The Width of Here (Silver Bow, 2021).  Abel resides in rural Georgia.