bet it among trees or tower,
evening makes me an only child.
lost in Sayama Hills,
squares cast from other people’s kitchen windows,
check light on the footpath and reveal
wooden signs among ferns leading to Totoro’s Forest,
leading to kin: Totoro, Ponyo, Sheeta,
and robots who tend flowerpots on homesick sills
who show me plenty is on the lonely road, in the lonely city.
plenty tendrils above automation ruin below:
empty mines, urban geology of windowless rooms
built for insatiable hungers.
even on the ledge of the empty sky,
garden robots tend consummate nests
and prove that their hollow insides
can be green with microflora.
I follow more signs, find more kin on the path;
learn to check on the hatchlings on sky island
then join the dinoflagellate photon dance
with soot sprites to circumnavigate starlight
and disperse with the spores that mushroom jungles;
and bloom with the jellies who pulse around kelp
in an ocean along forest roads along ancient whale routes,
I trail blowholes that weave the sea-foam.
in the plenty, I braid my mossing path
with countless siblings.
Jessica Lee McMillan © 2023
