It’s true: I know the aisles of my local Aldi 
better than I know the banks of the river 
three blocks from my house, the fissured 
earth mosaic rediscovered under the hot sun 
of an August morning, I went looking for 
driftwood and a moment’s peace, neither 
one a likely encounter amid the tangle 
of shopping carts and canned beans and 
shelves of pastichios, to find them both 
within a thatch of overgrown cottonwoods 
rising from the murky Ohio a reasonable 
recompense for the checkout clerk with 
the pierced lip setting aside my Shiraz: so 
sorry, ma’am, no wine before noon on Sunday.