I wanted to dream and see convincing things
because the things I see on the way to work
are ugly and dull, unless they’re in-between.
Those things are promising: The place behind the highway wall,
the fields past fences, the woods between lanes.
They are unconquered places where I might find a way through.
You might see them too. They go behind trails of raindrops
on the window. They go with the backdrop of music and radio static,
and they don’t much care for what we’ve done with the place.
We can’t live there. They don’t have grocery stores there or central heating.
Only the sun and the untamed wind, and rude twigs that leave red
marks on your skin when you squeeze through them. And ants.
We didn’t make them. Only split them up and shrunk them and defined
them incidentally by putting things up, and that doesn’t count as making.
But we have made substitutes, or at least tried, with our dream machines,
with our chemical concoctions and imaginary rules. We want to do everything
we can to get back what we lost, as long as we get to keep what we stole.
When will we accept that we can’t? When will we claim victory by accepting defeat?
