Random Storyteller

In-and-out shadow clouds pressed late morning air,

Squeezing the sweet odor of a summer storm

Heavy with deep August plant oils and dried earth,

While I turned a lazy spade to commit

A container of neglected lemon balm

To an easy death, casually mourning

The loss of glossy leaves in my cool desire

To push forward autumn’s purpley drama

Radiating from the centers of frilled kale

And splashing the watercolor outer limits

Of johnny jump ups and blueberry thrill pansies

Where ink-blot butterflies bled insect eternity;

But dog days had weeks to burn, so I yearned

For a sunflower farm where row on hot row

Of young blooms clocked their dawn-dusk journey

To a myth-killing circadian beat

Of east to west solar stares, blindly starstruck

By cloudless brilliance or shafts of rain-thinned light

Until their nightfall shrug and turn from west to east;

But #sunflower seekers flash mobbed the fields—

Zombied by selfie-stick scepter fixation—

And hoarded the climb of golden coronas

Regally braced by stiff-haired raw-green bracts;

They broke and trampled disks of seed-packed spirals,

Plowing under headless stalks in their smiley-face rush

To Instagram a dissipating dream field.

Was I any different—because I was there, after all?