A Diffrent Elsewhere

Like a double agent

I straddled the border

following the herd, rhyming

with the serious lawns of suburbia,

of matching throw-pillows,

lip-synching the anthem

while drifting to answer a call

away from the last row of homes.

to another country with no address,

a wooded place of my imagination

plucking fruit forbidden and bloody brambles,

reptilian roots slithering,

with stumps and sun and shadows,

sometimes grounded, sometimes

perched at mid-distance, there

but not altogether,

half in half out of my mind

following birdsong to where it becomes

tweets, chatter on the run,

of apps, bots and OMG,

a new conformity fluent in emojis,

a different elsewhere, inside out. 

My passport may have expired 

and soon my shelf llife, 

clinging to imperishable verities, 

subversive still, radical to the root.