Home Waters

You can paint your bricks

charming shades of pastel
lined up like Easter candy

red doors and black hinges

charismatic balconies

twisted with iron

but you will not have me.

Though you keep your spaces

tree-lined

white blossomed puffs in April,

ostentatious amber just before they trickle down in the cold

and you spatter it all with wildlife

who live on your stale white bread

and who have long lost their primal pull

and refuse to leave

I cannot be enticed to sink into your small loveliness.

Your water is glass

that does not roar and cleanse

just hovers noiselessly and hardly dares to ripple.

And while your river splashes impressively,

will jostle you from one end to the other

fanning out its arm to sell you all that slips by,

I will see only chip bags

mosquitoes

dead factories sprayed with delinquent color

and no salty mist will call me home.