- He wants the discovery of free energy,
- palladium in a jar of heavy water,
- a wheel that never stops spinning,
- but he is thinking about people starving
- in Africa and the Appalachians,
- and not about wars across the world.
- Others don’t even notice.
- They accelerate to escape,
- and blame their frustration
- on the unyielding traffic.
- Needing to get from here to there,
- trapped in his metal defense,
- he looks beyond the pavement edge,
- where a blackbird with a deformed foot
- pecks in the dirt, feathers stuck to a wad of gum,
- ants crawling from an aluminum can.
- We pay for freedom on the freeway,
- burning both past and future,
- never where we want to be.
- To widen the freeway
- we replace the oleander in the center
- with new lanes and a cement wall.
- After we rip out the bushes,
- they are nothing but poisonous leaves;
- you couldn’t sell them to anyone.
- The wind blows gently; birds scatter.
- He would tear out the freeways
- and rebuild the cities on the hills.
- Farms would fill the valleys
- with orchards and vineyards.
- A cataclismic change would occur.
- Above the traffic,
- birds fly toward the hills.
- Weeds grow beside the road.
- Each foxtail in the field bears many seeds.
- On the hill, acorns volunteer.
- The deer aren’t owned and pastured.
