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Going to seed

The gems of Minneapolis are lakes. 
Minnesotans do not know what to do
with rivers, but they love lakes. 

It is a bit less than three miles, to go around
Lake Nokomis, but cumulatively, I have walked,
there, several thousand miles.  Lovely miles.

No one has a house on the lake. 
All the houses are set back, behind a park. 
You can own a house there, but all of us
own the park, and the lake. 

Park and Rec must be short of funds.
No one wants to raise taxes to pay
for what all of us want.  Perhaps, in all,
we want too much.  We do not pay too much.
Our taxes are at a sixty-year low. 

The dandelions dominating the grass
look like a mineature forest of frizzy palm trees,
our of place, seeding their runaway domination
of the common green.  Money is short.
There is good time to blossom yellow, seed,
and blow.  The commons is a pillow fight. 

Had we been our own forebears,
planning the City of Minneapolis,
there would be no lakes, no commons. 
We have gone to seed.

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