Wild Carrot

Because I hate walls

I walk five miles a day,

one season bleeding into the next, 

the smell of spring both worst and best. 

I walk in all weather except “perilous,”

and even then, stupidly at times.

  *

The trail starts behind

the elementary school,

curves through a jungle of multiflora rose,

straightens out and edges a field 

where the kids of immigrants play soccer 

in scorching heat and drifts of snow,

passes an orchard of apple, 

peach, pear, and plum 

whose sweet May blossoms

can’t be captured in a photo

no matter how close

or still my hand,

then cuts through a grove of aspen,

where I’ve stopped in filtered light

to watch a pair of red-tail hawks

build a nest in the crotch of a pine  —

before it opens onto football field,

soccer field, baseball field,

the track where locals counted steps

before the gate got padlocked. 

*

Yesterday — where the trail bends

east at the base of Bartlett, 

and kids skipping school hunch 

on benches to text and vape,

their new beauty hidden 

under oversized hoods,

and Somali men in thobes

converse after prayer

while their sons play chase, 

their sweet barks scattering crows —

yet another shooting, 

shell casings on the sidewalk

in front of the bakery where 

I order platters of finger rolls

every Christmas and shiver in line 

with the solemn and the merry.

My sanity depends on this trail, 

I tell my husband, who frowns 

and says, “But this is the third time.”

I won’t give it up, I argue with no one, 

though I’ll no longer 

bring my daughter. 

*

I can’t give up the path where goldenrod 

grows to my shoulders by August, 

where primrose and mugwort 

make walls that shiver with bees,

and chicory stumps me

trying to describe that color —

Chances of me catching a stray are low -

like being struck by lightning?

Not really, my husband corrects me, 

since lightning hit this same spot thrice.

But the deer and the apple, I say, 

the peach blossoms and ditch lilies, 

the raspberries, grapevines, 

crown vetch and crows, 

this trail one of the few gifts 

of moving back home.

*

I watch a video of the shooter, 

a lurching coward, his arm loose.

He’s shot at a building. 

Or the people in a building.

The immigrant center, 

or the mosque next door.

Both share a backyard

at a bend in the trail, 

a bright meadow of swallowtail, 

painted lady, monarch,

everything pink to clover

and the air sharp with onion.

Conclusions are drawn 

in the comment section, 

the only obvious trait of 

a blurred shooter – race – 

avoided or exploited, 

surprise surprise.

People fight. Call names.

Hate their neighbors.

*

All summer, the trail grows greener.

All summer, more kids come out to play.

All summer violence 

quickens like wild carrot, 

the single crimson 

flower at its center 

a drop of shared blood.