A bright summer morn at ten o'clock
is already warm with out-of-school sunshine.
Down the concrete *****
of the manufactured L.A. river,
sits a red shopping cart,
two inches of run-off soaking its motionless wheels.
Empty, it sits in the heat without purpose,
like a discarded Radio Flyer,
no children willing to retrieve it for joyrides through parking lots or
through the shallow water in which it resides.
Even the business for which it was built will never miss it.
It merely waits for a rush of flood water
that will never come,
to wash it away from sight.