Goodbye Seattle (I'll Always Love You)

 

Yesterday, I ran through a field of luscious uncut alfalfa hay
It swirled around my legs
banking this way and that way in unison
like a cloud of phosphorescent plankton
I was naked
Not alone
I conversed with the wind

Today, I stepped off a Greyhound
I strutted out a skyline of emerald towers
into a neighborhood
that has been my lover for eight years
I saw the Wizard of Oz for the first time
people mill around insane, high, straight, colorful, gay, lesbian, and transgendered
and I just now realized how astonishing this city is

It is summer, the rain showers down sideways, warm
I left my umbrella behind the door
in my apartment on Capitol Hill
but somehow my clothes are still dry

Tomorrow my life here will end
I will be born new
Reincarnated into a boot
that has seen too many miles of asphalt
On the right shoe
the big toe has been exposed to air laden with petro-pollen fumes
Newspaper is stuffed into the other,
it stops ground water from seeping through holes
A starving hermit retreats into a shell
stolen from the shadow of a tree snail
it drinks sand from the exiting tide
and reads fear on the front page

This new place I’ll be going is monocromatic
Batter ladled into a skillet bubbling as it fries into a hotcake
is bumpier as it crawls and sprawls from wall to mart

What will come next I do not know
I’ve been unhinged from this life
I call home