THAT BROCHURE I STOLE//BUT WAS FREE

by Fred Aiken

don’t tell me when you start
to figure this all out,
i still want to be surprised,
so maybe,
if you could,
don’t even show it on your face,
and once we both know,
then maybe it can be that silent secret kept
in the whispers of the dandelions
figuring out the wild world isn’t quite what
the brochures made it out to be