The last of my house’s guardians

seems to be dying of old age,

drought, and last winter’s hard freeze,

its inner leaves curled and matte,

its outer leaves pale with dark veins

like elderly hands. Hundred-degree

weather, made worse by the sirocco

from nearby air compressors,

may prove its fatal fever. Soon

it will be only a ghost like

all its leafy predecessors,

their stumps now worm-drilled

fragments. I see them brandish their

bygone leaves in vacant sky

where sun hammers down on old brick

unshielded; for me their beauty

lingers like the chalky blue-green of

fresh kale that flares under

the cleansing thumb toward

fractal borders frilly like a lace ruff,

like the crown of a tree expanding

at once upward and outward, an

organic Mandelbrot set

with its own quiet blood.