in wyoming
the familiar wild leaf
proved tangy,
as in california
and in gratitude for the tastes
and smells and sights,
I offered the forest a goldsworthy:
a nestling
of curved fallen branches
pleasing to my eye.
this of course
was an obvious arrogance
but (I hoped)
also a kind of humility
since all artifice might be seen
as goldsworthies,
as patterns
learnt from leaf and branch.

then last
night stuck
in a ditch
its mud so
soft

stuck well

I slept
(nothing to be done)
slept on
the slope

slept well

and 6am awoke to see
a farmer passing
with a wry smile
and a chain

a ways on
I break fast
and see
that the car has acquired
a perfect
grassy
goatee

and it seems that the ditch
has made a goldsworthy of me

and the crickets leap
off cracked asphalt
over an emerging pattern
of plants