Idyll

How about a picnic lunch? I text to the teen, imagining 
sandwiches in wax paper envelopes, apples, 
a bag of chips we can share. I'm thinking of 
the park with the Japanese garden, really just 
a tiny island in a coulee with a lantern-like sculpture, 
gift from Awano, our Sister City, where last week 
we watched two geese herd nine goslings away
from a trio of too-curious boys.
 
In the end: drive-through chicken nuggets and a brief
cloudburst. We eat in the car at a different park.
Frustrated disc golfers huddle under trees. 
He scrolls through his phone, 
shows me a new artist who draws anthropomorphic 
bugs in interspecies relationships of diverse 
romantic orientations. We pool our knowledge 
of cryptocurrency in an attempt to understand. 
 
The clouds move on, we power down windows. 
A breeze blows the small lime green flowers 
of ash trees into the car. I assume, he says, 
there's a chemical reason why it smells so good 
after rain. 
             It's called petrichor, I say. 
It's so cool, he says, there's a word for that. I wish
I knew a word for everything.