Path

Path

The lot path I walk winds through
Queen Anne's lace and Norway
cinquefoil, bindweed and bull
thistle, chicory and deadly nightshade,
also called belladonna, left and then
right, around the rectangle hole, a
foot-deep salad of broke bricks, to
the el station to the Loop where, at
the river, through cement, a lone
mullein grows, fugitive from Monet's
garden, tall with tight yellow petals,
thick with seeds, ready to explode, as
I loll here and ponder next steps.

I rise and begin walking north under the
el tracks, going station by station, toward
a tree, maybe, or a cave, or ascension.

Like vacant lot weeds amid bricks and
broken glass, green, brown and clear, I
can't choose my soil, but I reach up and
up and up until the blade comes or the
heart explodes and the world is seeded
with what I have done and what I have left.

A day will come when this lot is clawed
out by bulldozers and other loud machines
to make way for a basement where traps
will be set to catch the mice who find
their way to the closet-corner Cheetos.