Desire Path

Now that spring is tottering toward summer on slippery heels the grass

is sodden sprawling slinky boingy and I walk through it on flat

shoes skidding on the promise of the new growth and the aroma

of the word of the moment petrichor and there’s a

reasonating climbing frame cum pirate ship cum spaceship there

behind metal fences pronged into softer tar circle where

dogs and kids shout and scrap and scram and the parents look on

or don’t look on because of 5G strength here so fingers slide some

new content on screens.

And it is all life whether online or up above and the sky can’t decide

whether to beam out gold or to explode gunmetal rain today but that

is May nearly over and all over. There are paths in a grid here real

paths with spray and chip gravel which crunch crack clacks under heels

detonating like breakfast cereal but more there is a distinct swathe

here in the grass where people have cut through where has been made

a more direct route through from playspace to the other corner half

a mile hence where the flattened spongy watery grassy desire path

reigns, as was, supreme.

This pleases me though it is slippery plodding with my cumber bags

my Lidl purchases my catfood and ginger ale and whatnot and so forth

but it is not so far home and I like this idea of a desire path

I like the phrase I like the sound of it in my mind, the notion that

despite that crosshatch of asphalt designated driver people have

trodden the way they want to go and though it is inexact

there is a definite trail to follow through the newly verdant

field and that is sweet.

Shopping is heavy and slows the walk and the slower you walk

the heavier the shopping so I try and pick up a fair pace if I can

but not as astonishing as the dogs who charge around not just

zigging and zagging but zogging and zugging too, sniffing musk

from their predecessors here and there and who knows what else

one slobberchops has his favourite red ball in his mouth and he ain’t

letting go of that for anyone in his mad dash to wherever

furry bodies follow feet

and I realise that here is joy and no concept of desire aside

the moment, the madness of being, of being alive,

not questioning but zegging about and zooming without end

without process without regress without second guessing when

or whether this will stop; dogs have no paths either outside of

the ones their snouts and scrambles lead them off

or on greening their faces in the newborn maze of triumphant growth

for now for ever for wow

bow wow whatever that means and maybe it’s nothing

because I plod on my desire path somehow thinking

I am transgressing from the gridlock but now I understand

that all I am doing is following in the footstepping on the land

of others, strangers, but sticking to the same damned springing path

that a thousand others have worked and whittled and that

this is no victory, not ever, not now.