July. I walk through the large field of parked cars
between Starbuck's and Home Depot,
recognizing rosemary bushes and Chevrolets.

White paint and motor oil stain the asphalt,
and the wind pushes nomad plastic bags.
A boy and a girl wait inside a wagon. The girl

has put the front seat back and lies stomach down.
A single black bird floats onto a wire.
Outside the garden section of Home Depot,

spices and vegetables ooze
into the wind. Chamomile next to green peppers.
Overhead, wren chatter. At my feet

stacks of lawn stones. Someone has tossed
cardboard and weathered wood scrap casually on top.
It all fits. The discarded Gatorade bottle

wedges next to plastic pots of ice plant.
A half-full, lidded coffee cup wobbles on its side
by the peach tree on its wood stand. And me,

in dirt-scuffed pants and black gardening fingernails.
Cement islands wall off solitary trees.
Tall brown light posts flicker on and a 'No War'�

bumper sticker finds the eye. Stray shopping carts
block parking spaces, newspaper ads in the baskets.
We can travel far outside ourselves

but we are expert at coming back.
Even the pretense of being lost
sometimes is a home.

Outside Target, a man rings a bell for The Salvation Army.
The breeze tugs at a magazine page;
someone's cell phone rings; traffic lights turn.

I wonder how I'd be, dressed in white,
standing all day with a bucket of loose change.
Then I notice my hands smell like rosemary.

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