Gusher

Who would care about sunrays streaming through the windows of the co-op except someone filling a plastic container

with olive oil in the bulk produce aisle, watching the light infuse the rising tide of green-gold oil flowing from the spigot

almost as slowly as the sap once rose in the tree in California where the label says it’s from. No wonder it dazzles given

that olives are little more than drops of sunshine in a semi-solid state that just now are reliving their story

right in the middle of my container as a slow-motion swirl, a strange funnel of bright bubbles, gathers itself upward

and I can see the olive tree emerging, first the trunk and then the branches and pale green leaves unfolding like a strand

of DNA. It’s good the co-op doesn’t charge for reverie, but someone might have told me my cup was running over—still, I closed

the tap just before it did and capped as best I could this shimmering gusher of imagination with the thin, plastic lid.