Coyote johnson

near the border of
Sector 5 of free Savoy

Only to themselves are the passionate
hot. To the objects of their passion they
are cold. What Yeats knew. They eradicate
what they notice, as the thumb hard-crams the clay
impressionable under it, to lie flat,
apt to the shape their cold-steel scribes may
cut or spurn it to. Yet they know passion
must drown to ripen sweet & give fair play
to the whole life hot passion speeds us from.
 
As passion's object, dig with your ampersand:
be cold & hot. The receptive earth will come
to transform the root-end that your planting hand
cut & abandoned, to new chrysanthemum.
 
Heartfelt thought, drop your guard, keep clear, be slow;
double your careful opposites & grow.