Hedges

Dustbowl city
desert of granite
I find oxygen in hedges.

As four-wheels thunder
up cloudy backstreets
here I am in a butterfly-bush.

Leaning in lilac
I’m hyperventilating
it’s the photochemical hazes.

Black plume
from a chrome orifice:
flee the combustion-god.

A six-wheel tranny’s
pent-up filthiness
issues where monoxide dazes.

Pity Granny
she won’t be diving
down behind lucky lavender

Her arthritic
knees aren’t nimble
hear her sick airways grumble

Two bin-bags
black with particulate
do her pulmonary work.

On I stumble
between oases, hoping
for some Queen Anne’s Box.

Unbeautiful privet
behind which gossiped
Victorians, be my aqualung.

Navigating
the microclimate
evergreen is never wrong.

I, windcatcher
drink vivid inbreaths
pneumatic medicine-of-choice.

A rich pocket
nostrils hover:
God bless photosynthetic rocket

Inhalator.
I’m surviving
where the clean air is scant.

In ion-zones
in semishade
thankfully I croak and pant.

iii

O no, the emission-plumes
look, mock-orange
on the right!

Hoovering green
molecules, honeysuckle’s
a welcome sight!

(Man may walk on Mars
tomorrow, impossible
right now to cross the street.)

Pedestrians think non-stop:
‘Cannabis-shrubbery’s
air-filter must be sweet!

(Struggling into
a chemical-suit just
to get to the corner-shop.)

Downwind of hell
convection-protection is
life-support in a dirty town

Air of laurel
crown of song: be
botanical resurrection!

Awning of freshness
for diesel-throat
burning on urban trudge!

You are lifesaving
lord of vegetation
god of horticultural rebirth

Counteracting
the carbonic plague
smothering the anthill.

Overpower
this terrain
(worthless metropolitain)

Flower from
a clean heaven
spring again upon a new earth.

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