I relished your boyish whimsy:
wanting, at one and the same time,
to do no evil and to index everything.
I snapped at a shrub to give to you,
wondering if you would tell me
whether it was shrouded
in those same leaves of old
that crown a good sauce.
You guffawed and tutored me
to consider man–made products:
I would do well to avoid flowers and puppies.
I lay in a patch of Quaker Ladies
near the water
as the Spring gusts
garnished me with pollen.
I strolled barefoot home in the mud
as the rain came.
You turned white when I asked
the meaning of Stockton Gala Days;
you produced the most delicious drops
of technicolor: something in the
red, green, and blue pixels
of your blank screen shinning through
the ensnared dew
still waiting to connect
technology to nature.
I longed to turn you around
to give you a picture of yourself,
but then the moment would have been lost
and somehow the algorithms that embed
don’t capture it all.