For three weeks, I was a guest: to different showers
And toilet flushes in the West, to coffee houses, to apps,
to rosemary as box shrub. A guest to my suitcase.
To hot tubs and skin in the garden of my tiny cottage.
Guest to stretches of blacktop like a zip, Lily Valley Church and Rainbow Donuts.
Guest to the mirror: my daughter hosted me.
Hit me in the gut. Made me think of another paradigm: host/parasite.
I made a typo and wrote paradise.
Then I friended Monterey cypress. They lean and question,
buffeted by circumstance. I saw the bright grass after a morning rain,
speckled as skin of a fabulous lizard. Small guests, nothing but.