BREEZE

The untutored pen exceeds itself. It's beyond containment in this white daisy mind – she loves me, she loves me not. It's all just beyond chimneys and landscapes and such. Stored apples that want to bob again in a washtub full of water. And after one is caught, to slice and cinnamon it. Which seems a sacrifice. But without that meal, would there be a reason to empty that tub at the root of a tree?

And the way through the garden is anyone's path.

There is such delight in not trolling for whom the bell tolls. There is a dance of sugar plum pebbles, dried cranberries that revel in hot gravel, a chorus line of gas station attendants. Any way you'd like to put it. Modal words sneeze Sergeant Pepper's ka-poof! ka-Bam! Shazam! John Cage, I realize, kept tidy fingernails.

She loves me, she loves me not --

Plucking wings off a fly, the dragon's lair is hidden behind a counter at 7-11, parsing breath mints. The dragon wears bright red and yellow wings, flashes blazing blue eyes, is somehow religious and gets to cavort with drums, the way it landed like a gymnast on the street. Does the dragon stop to tell stories? How about the hero birds that ride reincarnated on a rhino's horn? Do they?

Fifteen minutes of solitude before the morning mirror, preparing for ordeals and assurances. Unsung hero of the day. Soon it will be bobbing for apples.

I plan to fix a string to my washtub. And a pole. To play bass, even though I don't know how. And you can play kazoo through dragon's flaming nostrils. The sun will wait til we're done.