Lizzy Burnam 🐞

I had a good day: I spent the morning
in a bagel shop with plants crawling 
up trellises and dripping off 
high-set shelves. I licked cream cheese
squeezed out the middle and sipped
a decent light roast drip. A man
on the street pointed at my fingerless 
gloves and said, “what happened 
to your paw?” I smiled 
and kept walking. My hair blew wild
in the wind at the Farmer’s Market. 
I bought two drawings as gifts for my sisters: 
one of a cow and a sunflower, 
the other of a Mona Lisa in the crescent moon. 
The sky was blue for a while, 
then it rained, and all the dandelions closed 
like little yellow fists in the grass. 
I took pictures of graffitied alleyways 
and let a woman cut me in line 
at the Post Office. “What happened 
to USPS?” she complained. 
“They used to give out pens, packing tape.” 
I drove to the mountains with the windows cracked
and smelled smoke; on the way home, 
I passed a blackened city bus 
wrecked on the side of the road. 
Held my breath when a woman lit a spliff 
on the trail. Laid down in the moss by the river 
and read the Wikipedia pages 
for the plants surrounding me: shinglewood, 
common lady fern, ivy, osoberry.
Pondered my horoscope in the newspaper: 
“What happened to ingenuity? 
Your homework, Libra, is to figure out
how to harvest goodness 
from the pollutants in your world.” 

Envoi 
Days like these are a gift. 
I enjoy the clean meandering 
of a solitary mind. Still,
here’s what’s polluting me: 
my empty holding-hand. My awe 
bound like roots in a too-small pot. 
My two eyes don’t see 
except from only one angle. 
Sure, I had fun today. 
I just never have as—much—fun 
without you, baby.