How strange it must be,
to live in the countryside -
to fall asleep to the sound of crickets under your window,
and bullfrogs croaking in the creek.

So far from the sirens -
the Los Angeles Screamers -
tearing through the floodlit nights,
picking us off, one at a time,
huddled in our houses,

alone, together.

I picked a dandelion
on my way to the store,
a perfect little orb of potential.

I thought about blowing,
scattering the seeds into the world,
stepping through the cloud
so that some of its magic might seep into me,
pick up a hint of a dream and carry it out into the great blue world.

But I wanted to wait
for the right moment.

I rambled off the main road,
through the tall trees by the park
to a shaded side street,
past a magnolia, blooming like mad.

The light was right,
late afternoon sun-strings dripping through the leaves,
and it was quiet, and perfect.

But there was someone weeding in the yard,
and a young couple walking across the street,
and all of a sudden i felt ashamed,
a grown man clutching a dandelion,
so i put it in my bag, for later.

- - -

Later came, and I found it, forgotten,
crushed under a week’s worth of milk and eggs,
ten or twelve huddled feathers clinging to the underside.

And even though it was a shadow of the strong-stemmed bulb I’d picked,
and even though it had been a long, drizzly workday melting into a dull, freezer-pizza evening,
and even though the light was all wrong
in the supermarket parking lot,

and i was tired,
surrounded by shoppers
but feeling lost in the world,

I breathed in
and blew.

I am the streaks of red-green light refracted and reflected in the raindrops on the window of the night bus, hurtling through the city as it sleeps. I am the lonesome hum of a generator in an empty stadium. I am the orange buzz-hiss-buzz of a streetlamp in a quiet parking lot. I am a first kiss, a last dance, a slow sway towards death, a black butterfly ****** into the engine. I am the green fields, seen by aeroplane on descent, bisected by fingers of muddy brown river. I am the pain and the joy of a young girl, the shame and regret of an old man, the flight and the howl of a stray dog. I am the brite-white ice cream clouds, the heavy, hungry ground, and the gaping, gleaming, shimmering, sideways sea.