When you’re driving home,

passing all the roadkill

and cracked fuel pipes,

watch how the sunset pulls

at trees and clouds

like they don’t want to let each other go.

1.

Someone said it would be magnificent

but her knees had burns

from the faux-velvet sofa

and her hair smelled of smoke

with a twist of mimosa

that had seemed a sophisticated choice

at brunch hours before.

2.

He plowed away

and she swatted at memories

of sea foam and molasses.

3.

Lips smashed together,

full of pizza sauce and belligerence,

they were tossed about the cabin

in a thoughtless fever,

forgetting who they were

and where they thought they were going.

An eye for leaf patterns

didn’t help in the city

but there were reminders

in the soles of sleeping homeless

and fungal pillars

by the docks.

There’s no context

in today’s moral anguish

to reconcile dreams of flowing hair

in a dancing meadow

but we reach silently

for change each time we choose

to read or sing,

even if it’s not the comforting lullaby

we thought we’d have when we got old.

Trees trapped in concrete

know it’s temporary,

no delusions or dreams,

Being with the air that’s left;

we hold ourselves down

to take a beating and rest.

The symmetrical blemishes

were a blessed distraction

from the gaping wound

where the free spirit used to be.

However did we think

there’d be no consequence

to all the dreaming?