Amazing the stab of pleasure
A sweet immolation
Warm blood flooding the cooled interior
An ardent hiccup in the breast
This, from the tread of my shoe in the mud
Mud, glorious mud, as rare in Los Angeles as rain
Each step I take builds the pleasure
And the wind and the weather
Blows through me a cold fresh expansion of the lungs
And nostalgia for the East Coast
Or any submersion in nature, please
All this hot action from the lane behind the post office
An alley of concrete marvelously broken
Nature taking her time back here
Suddenly I cheer on the earthquakes
Like Geilgud on a bender
“Quake away! Break the concrete casing on this land!”
Break it up and wash it away
This coy lane that mimics a country road
Has cleaved me from my city self
And peeled off my city clothes
And now I’m open and craving the older roads
The crumbling stone walls of Connecticut
Their shy collapse and beautiful decay
Forest: Thick with birth and menace
And yet to walk through it is to feel
With marrow-deep certainty
One’s embarrassing human power
Concrete: A necessary evil
The candied shell of our preference
That she’ll eventually shrug off
With a throat-clearing and a shudder
Miranda Thompson has written for various outlets including Wired, Vogue, KCET, Disney, CBS, the CW, and Fox. Most recently she co-wrote an original episode of the Simpsons.
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