The Zigzag Path

by John McCullough

The day connives and you think you cannot live here,
in your body, alone and rushing forward all the time

like a silty river. All you wanted was to find a home
beside the souls of white roses and hurt no one

but the light keeps shifting. An invisible broom
keeps flicking you out from cover. You roll up

at each destination with someone else’s face, as wrong
as the beech tree in Preston Park hung with trainers,

its museum of tongues. The day connives, but this dirt
is proof of trying. The chalk path you never longed for

zigzags through bluebells no one asked to throng.
In the park, a robin has built its nest inside a Reebok,

the shoe’s throat packed with moss and a crooked
whisper of grass that says I can, I can, I can.