Vegetable Lamb of Tartary

Having eaten all within reach, I go traveling.

Wearily, I pause by the shores of the sea.

Which sea? I am unrooted, and my mind is broken.

I can draw no water from the sun, no strength from the ground.

From armpits of sand, thatches of green-stuff tangle up.

I feel defiant; I am a bloodless vegetable lamb.

The barometz bleat rises through salt air

sweet grasses gnawed away; fully blossomed and hanging high

and so nearly dead. How have I come this far?

Forgetting my xylem umbilical cord, I plucked myself and did not screech.

Here I am, my baby brothers and sisters, my warm woolly rhizomes.

I experience survivor's guilt. I am hungry.