The boy in McDonald’s with his school text,
(a Midsummer Night’s dream),
gets to the part where someone’s dad
turns into an ass, and laughs.
Sprites attend him – here’s Peaseblossom, Cobweb,
Moth, and Mustardseed,
drifting on vape smoke past Five Guys
and he hides away his book.

There’s ‘Puck’ badly sprayed on the belly of the underpass –
drivers don’t understand his name now –
folklore is folklore if only for the people,
and no imagined realm of ether.

There is the place where the film broke down
as we watched Midsommar – remember,
just after the first death?
And we wandered down the fire exit
to the theatre’s sinister,
the evening silent and suspended motes of air
as we waited to resume the ritual,
the night so warm.

And this is the thought I have now,
foot sore on a Haussmann boulevard,
slightly drunk on sweetish apples –
of the alignment of those streets with trees,
no person-tree higher than the elms,
no city unless a city in the forest, Walker said –
no person if not a tree
whose blossom is green white.

All litter and money and words,
intoxicating with nothing but promise –
like the boy in McDonald’s with the primer,
dreaming unknowing the truth of Summer.