Dian Duchin Reed

Why I Left the City

A thick and growing mulch of cigarette butts in a planter holding a live tree. A long-dead, limbless tree trunk painted red, white, and blue and strung to a liquor store by a line of triangular, plastic flags in primary colors. An endless avenue of concrete and asphalt and chain-link fences topped with razor wire.

early spring
the small miracle
of beet seedlings