When the screw thread on a plastic nozzle head
gives way, which come to think of it’s
their only failure mode, I mosey over
with a satchel of replacement nozzle heads,
a square-bit key to turn the intermittent off,
a while spare to dawdle vaguely shaded, like the beans, by spritz.
The rain-bird is a sort of square-bit key
unlocking California to green.
You think about the Calaveras
crumpling behind the dam, extruded
through its pinchpoints, culverts, aqueducts
to hammer here, a thousand wings in sync, down mile latitudes.
Yessir, you think about it for a while,
wing as waterfern, as fern of water,
wing as feather, fractalling to spray
to swansdown drifting through no breeze
to gloss on leaf, the green blade of the possible.
Then you jerk the key back and start for the access road.