Not wishing for a moment to be upstaged
by clouds of blowsy blossom that cannot stay
although they are the queens of death and sex,
although it’s light which holds them in its net:

not wishing to be thought at all plain
on their highway diet of two-stroke and gasoline;
not wishing to be outshone or overlooked
by the brilliant and branch-outreaching, swept

by salt-wind towards the inland spaces, they –
as if many gases leaked away
then rose and then spread thinly out
like tresses, like coiffures of cloud
that hung on the air – set light to their hair.