Wise Owl

Forego clamshells of triple-washed power greens in lieu of something out back from a friend who says it’s enough to intuit and everything else is academic. That it’s fine to be academic as long as you give people a break except polluters who are doing enough breaking. In fact, they’re taking naps on your pillows of organic greens because plastic film is stretched around the clock but seldom reinvented to wake them up. I can’t get any city back from time. That’s a constant transformation of pedestrians into crosshairs and sciatica in the shape of car seats whipping roundabouts. Whipping children into strong neck muscles and gummy strawberry Dramamine. If you buy a used car there is breakfast in the backseat. If you buy a new bible it comes wrapped in hot plastic. But if you buy new poetry you’ll contribute to a superfund cleanup site of love not money. Line broadsides like a litter box under owl trees to catch the necklace teeth of deep-pocket gophers. These absorbent papers—where would you like them burned, New Gadsden? Tallahassee? We blow out those candles with a sincere wish for your many strange years of undiagnosed syphilis.

Enfant terrible

I turned my laptop upside and shook. Dear email, is anybody out there? Does anybody think of me on Sundays at 11:26 am Pacific? The answer: Big Skies Country Store, The Home Network Sweepstakes, IBS Insights, Bay Cities Morning Report, Wolverton’s Bakery, James Taylor Concert Alerts. That’s a decent cross-section, I said. It winked at me and its power went out. My bedroom, my house, the valley below, the hill above. The outage kept spreading. I’d seen this same thing before in my lame duck with staph foot. It won’t stop ‘til it reaches a knee. Power gets stumped these days. Oh, my grandmother with a blackening leg. They told her, amputate or die. The deterioration took out my view of Los Angeles, then all of Southern California. Really put a damper on Vegas. You will never take my leg, she said, I would sooner croak. She sooner did. The laptop battery sustained awhile, gave off blue light, but there were no servers left to circulate validation. Outside a rabbit harvesting the last strands of sunset. It was a delight because I’d known her before. Named her Zelda Fitzgerald and dabbed her nose with salve. With burns like that, I could only assume she’d escaped a wildfire. Later, she tried ballet but ran off. Left one slipper behind. Once all the electronics were good and dead, the city, the grid, I looped that slipper on my keychain and hiked up to San Francisco. There was sourdough spilling all over the place. The main arteries of town were receiving a hell of an angioplasty, its humans squeezed to raisins like diamonds. Yeast is the start of something good. We love the smell of baking bread. Well, we asked for it.

Red Tape

People adore being correct, precise, about wild flowers, exotic pharmaceuticals, corresponding diagnoses, coffee tasting notes, all sorts of distinctions and antique valuations. I know the best cider mill. No, not the one with the water wheel. You’d think so, with all the people, but you need to focus on the orchard, not the distracting folk trio. You start to notice that everything requiring precision is a real hike. Take the best waterfall, for example. The travel guide recommended a lovely well-traveled path about a half mile from the parking lot. Good for families of all ages, a charming pool filled by a spritely forty-foot descent. I’d say accessible, in the sense of broad popularity, but accessibility, it seems, is the torment of sophistication and rigor. Tom knew a back route, a real ankle twister, to the upper falls that was only frequented by adventure seekers donning specially certified backpacks dangling with rainbows of unused metallic carabiners. You’ll need all sorts of carabiners if you’re going to take matters seriously. Tom promised a hundred-foot drop, and he may have been accurate, except the trail dumped you out right at the slated crest of the river’s jaw. You couldn’t see the majesty of its veil, the terminus below, without plugging yourself in a barrel and shoving off the cliff. You’d probably have to sign a waiver with the parks department and I’m just so tired of fine print, and Tom.

Population Wise

The hummingbirds have gone mad for my purple sage! Get over here all of you. I have room for eight billion. Shush your folding chairs and surrender your phones. Don’t make another sound. Listen to them sillying up this place with their tweets! I have enough openland for all. Look beyond their flits of ruby and gold, it’s rolling out like a fresh palace rug. Purple sage brushing up the entire planet. Hummingbirds sticking landings like a branch’s pandemic. Miniature vortices taking down airplanes that were absolutely itching for a herd of fleas. I saw a hummingbird chiseling at the World Bank like a woodpecker. Help it get through! It just wants a bit of nectar for all its occupation. Just enough for its children nesting silently beneath a plump nectarine. Silence? I spoke too soon. Some little scoundrel just squeaked his chair leg and it sounded like a big idea. What an afternoon this turned out to be. I didn’t get anything done.