now I:

 tend still the tendrils

 that choke my bramble blooms

 with the contracted faith and fading strength

 of a farmer nearing noon

 even though these pumpkin petals

 never once offered one gourd

 or any sprig worth any more

 than a fleeting bud of hope

 but all whiter gifts grow just, to wither

 leaving: life's bittersweet surmise

 the sharpest edge is the pointless point

 that life's absurd playwright devised

 still in the moments, I feel whole

 (if the salience of parts subside

  to impart a peace of sense-like paradox

  of Christ harrowed yet divine)

 when by mistake or by design

 time's clink-clank engine comes to rest

 and my eyes drift above the Flatlands

 to a see rippled without crest