William "Carlost" Stevens

In a jungle of highways and big-box grammar,
might gentleness carve out a yard for its planters,
its pole-mounted birds and mating hoses of green?

Transpicuous rocks have promised
echolalia of water, even, might greet him
from the rockpool of the parking lot,

or from the AstroTurf roadside, but how long
has this traveling salesman longed

for one opening door
for his jagged script?

Reluctant of metal, carving and blasting
a path to the Safeway, antennaed, he’s humming, to the width of the windshield, field

of the stars wheeling
(as he does, upside-down along it):
Old Storm churning from the Great Garden

Hose of the Heavens, he thinks:

a wing
on a white lawn.