Broken Glass in a Green Desert

The rain is gone and the cherry blossoms are growing out of the cracks in driveways
And the world is a giant stadium full of green trees and white flowers,
A jungle of telephone wires and recycling bins all wrapped in soft rainclouds.

But there is broken glass on the sidewalk from a car accident this morning
On the way to school, all swept up into little piles
Like those polished fragments of beer bottles you find on the beach,
Making me think of sirens wailing blue and white
And the little girl on the curb crying and biting her fist
As someone wrapped a blue blanket around her shoulders.

But now it is dusk and the air smells like charcoal and oregano
And someone somewhere is cooking but I am walking
On the wet sidewalk and the glass is crunching like sand under my feet
And everywhere there are possibilities.

Like the origami flower that I pick up,
To take home and tack to the wall where it fills the room with its greenness
As the dust falls all around like purple light,
Mixing and fading and bringing in the moonlight,
Which comes as a hand, a page, a touch of rain in this strange green desert.