DOMINOES

Twinkie has no idea what I'm writing, she just likes to bat the pen about.

Those water smoothed boulders in the creek knew nothing about caulking compound. The creek rippled right around them.

The third chakra, known as hara by some, is best. Concentrate there, it might be zazen, and if you're measuring blood pressure the while, watch as it settles into normal.

She curls up around my toes and purrs.

The progress of a small spider in the cone of light under the lamp is slower than philosophy. And just as interesting.

Leaves of grass, many tied in bundles, thatch a roof. I imagine white glaciers melting into the earth.

A migration of illusions following each other, in a coffle, heading for the sea, rolling off the cliff, lemmings dropping over the edge. They were a family once.

Frankie enters. And rather than starting a wrestling match, as usual, both cats are washing each other. The evening news it's not.

Once it was Scarne On Dice, then “Reno, the biggest little city in the world,” and now it's Beyond Weird, by Philip Ball. Quantum mechanics outpacing Stirling Moss.

The bricks in Humpty's wall came tumbling down and, having fit the battle of Jericho, he's just sitting there, in mid-air smoking a hookah. The thing about late at night in here is it's sooo quiet. No TV. No Twilight Zone. No Big Bang. Bob Dylan is sand in the plaster: -- do not follow leaders , , , Leader's?

No one's listening. That's how quiet. Spanish moss hanging limp, dead ghosts, motionless as Frankie waiting in ambush for the doves to arrive at scattered seeds on the patio. I've said to our cats that doves are friends. But do they listen?

Meaning squiggles in past words invented for something else, fizzed through a fog of tiny bubbles that popped over your nose while sipping a lemon coke at the 5-Spot in Los Gatos. I always wanted to play trombone like Phil Herrin. But never got around to trying. That tone of his, rising like a halo, an individual sun. It evaporated in the bubbles, never to return.

Everyday now is a chance to play something new on the keyboard. The cats are snuggled, cheek to cheek, asleep. Isn't it so that notes, once played, are gone? Oh, of course, recordings? Imposters.

There were stone steps chiseled out to a pinched vanishing point in dream light, not the sort seen in any natural forest. Edges sharp, as though of a sunny afternoon. I think maybe it's part of Twinkie's tunnel, but who knows? Look at her, flaked out completely, her tongue slightly stuck out, on her back, one rear paw up in the air. And it's twitching. Maybe the chase is on. A rat maybe, a moth. For a second I almost see the fleeting shadow.

It's setting up dominoes to topple in a single gust of wind. There – hear the clicks? Like poker chips. And something inexplicable in the tone, the change of it as they fall. Ordinary things, when closely watched, will disappear, the twitch of a dream wriggling down the hole.

Office towers sway in the wind. A line of Big Macs and VTA busses comes to a stop at one end of the red carpet being rolled up to Air Force One. The choreography of a bumble bee is scarcely noticed. One wishes to smell the trees of Central Park, but one would be wrong. Counterfeiters lurk like Frankie in the shadows, being hunted down mercilessly by bit coin laundromats. There is a new tune shuffling in the streets. It might be swept up into a Broadway bucket.

A puff of dust.