Which Is Where We Are Now

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.

Once upon a time,
 just blobs of cold.
We know better now
 our modern sensibilities understanding
each flake:
a little bit of dust
 through hot and cold
  from such great heights,
a natural growth of
 crystalline nature
 unique through its travels
 often imperfect
 its simple structure
  making it glaringly obvious,
melting on human contact.

I have been only projecting feelings
 upon the wall of my life.
  It is a strange movie.

I cut myself loose,
 turn myself wild.

These raw feelings,
 man need not witness.

These raw feelings,
 I need them for a real life,
  to tread them.
To tread the path;
 to be in the sunlight.

The gentle, arched wob-wob,
 she advances step-step
  up the lake.
There is no one here
 except the mini-Lochnesses
 momentarily periscoping up,
 facing the wind
 as it whips up waves.
Oh, another follows
 step for step in step.
I realize this is Spring.
Briefly, I wonder if the tension
 is only my speculating:
 she will yield without a fight
 or they are already friends
  as well as lovers.
It is Spring and each walk
 step-step up this long lake
 and it would take all day;
 no, never finish, they way
  they walk step-step.
He leans into flight,
 glides purposefully down the lake,
 over the hill, and is gone.
Perhaps she didn’t notice;
 perhaps she felt a mere ripple
  of a flap amid the wind;
 perhaps she was only looking
  one step ahead as she continues
 step-step.
She eventually settles in and
he returns, wings splayed,
cruising to the other end
like he has some business to attend to.