Saturday, October 1, 2011

Fourth September Selection

I've missed my connection; idling guiltily.

On the radio: gun imagery.

Outside my car window: hot asphalt and cool shade.

Corner Crepe Myrtles scream pink in late summer

by Victorian gingerbread. Pine and palm,

those strange California companions,

mingle urbanely, as they must,

for someone has planted them here,

with the deep dense native Oak

as the afternoon burns and hardens.

No other life than this

and how strange and few our choices really are--

this is exactly it: the sticky car seat,

a burring power edger noise,

this mistake and all my mistakes sitting here with me,

wasting time no one has, together.

A life so fragile a finger flick could destroy it,

caught, like an insect in amber.


--Deanna Hopper

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