not in Paris

I keep a ledger, row on row, tracings of sky
and begonia. The columns, creamy and wide,
wait for jots of Euros spent in bookstalls
and smart cafes. But I have filled them
instead with what the prairie gives, thoughts

of storms, words like thunderhead and thistle.
The Solferino bridge will not fit between
these pages. The buskers beneath do not care
for the silence of closed books. Montmartre’s
portraitists cannot be plucked like daisies

and conserved for some lonely year to come.
I plow these paper fields with a fine tip pen,
allow myself to fancy up the margins
with little sketches of the Sacre Coeur,
the smudgy dusk at the Jardin du Trocadero,

wobbly wildflowers that skirt the sensible
crops I sustain. I am not in Paris, nor Brazil,
but planted deep on this invariable plain.
It spreads before me, a true accounting that bears
with grace the indulgence of my penciled larks.