When a tossed stick scatters yellowjackets,

they don't go far. Before long they settle,

their lost adoration simply reborn,

back in the goldenrod's thick redolence.

Come, I'll show you Penny's celery, shorn,

sprouting plain from its own withered severance.

Fruit rendering to seed sings the ember's

crushed-glass work-song, the conflagrant racket 

of heart's franchise. Kiln and fired vessel

are one. Feelings grow of their own thin ash.

Listen: losers transcend by mere winning

and the seed's learnt it must grow, remembers

how and, answering debts, uncrumples cash

whose value's held. To a new beginning.