Sleepy time Tea

Who but a dreamer would dare? Upright thoughts scurry for a place to hide. The deluge is neigh. Hard won facts will go under. There at the outset, standing on the edge of the wharf . . .

Leaving behind a war zone, cradling the last intact egg huddled in a refrigerator during the tsunami. One writes for a person with shoes of a given size. Or for one's self. Or a friend or a neighbor perhaps. Or for a market in general with defined interests, willing to spend just so much money.

It has been said the that land of dreams is not real. Not like going to work, or for a walk, or for talking to the dove sitting in the feeder.. As I approach with a cup of seeds, dove looks at me. We have, through unlikely moments, developed a sort of eye blink semaphore rapport. I don't think we fully believe, either of us, that we're actually having a conversation. About what? How can pecking sunflower seeds and chopping broccoli equate? The intricacies of building a nest, or of nest life, are either unthought or plain as day. Unimaginable in other than a dreamlike way. But none of this seems to matter. We exchange winks and don't know what can't be said. So there it is.

Perchance to dream. I'll go brush my teeth. The world that's been waiting has no arguments with reality, wears Halloween mask personalities playing trick or treat, floating by on waves of laughter, a lawyer in a canoe on the steps of the Supreme Court. And that's just for starters.

Hidden Logic

There is a great gaping mystery setting this pen to paper. Think of a fly on an aircraft carrier, agog as the fighter jets miraculously land. Everything skids along and reaches the end of the page without falling off . . .a miracle. This is achieved by the largely unappreciated constraints of grammar. We'd have to keep on running, otherwise, until running out of ink or, god forbid, admitting there really is no end. If that's so, then the edge curves down into a sphere, you keep on going, and eventually it's right back to the future again. These are the usual, and purposeful, reasons for learning declension. The weight of all logic rests upon this small dot of ink, right here.

What to do with it, how it came to be in the first place, are as immediate, inevitable and unquestionable as popcorn at a movie theater. Modern warfare, with all its technological pride in shock and awe and regimented organization, depends upon scrounging abilities. Fly paper comes to mind, seemingly unimportant, until it all comes down to reading a radar screen. Or mosquito nets. Even with grandiose schemes, it's the little things. Toilet paper. Without it, how long would a missile silo be habitable?

The pen skitters off, tracing nothing like a begonia in winter. The glorious blooms went where? They were. Probably they will be. Grandiose red celebrations – see them bleeding off the edge of the page? This time of year flies are few.

Grass, mown or not, is the big picture.

No colors are quite so bright as this quiet night. Making some comparison with an aurora of whatever will not do. All the stars of the universe will not do. How can it be said that nothing is everything and everything is nothing? It does not make sense.

That bird singing in flight was following a passing car that, subtly, had an engine with an irregular miss. It's the little things that bring it all back. Spontaneous laughter.

Of course it was about this noisy night, crowding out the quiet. How things begin on their own, without tidy references and explanations. Stuff pushes through without regard to the grip of time chiseled in stone, and the bats flying off suddenly. For no given reason. Quite naturally the sextant and level get satisfying results in laying bricks, which will stay put, set in concrete. Very neat and quite useful. But the bats fly where they like.

An archeologist dusting off bones. Who cares? This line a day thing may upend itself. Good enough is just scruffing around, brushing off half buried remnants of mysteries that gradually disappear, carefully under a blue sky, and sometimes the parameters of present things.

Now see how quiet leaves unseen, off into the night, singing irregularly . . .



And All That

afternoons tethered

to vagaries arranged

by a desperate fourth grade teacher

how many windows?

I escaped

to velvet mounds of deep green moss

past scintillations of the war zone

the steady drip of a village fountain

consisting solely of literature

in that time out of time

. . .

sparse words recalled

a mirage, out of pity

filling reserved spaces

granted for the grapes of celebration

drooping, the purple seasons

loading parables of yellow grass

in baskets

filled with dry summer days

tossed by poets

to their graces tumbling

I have saved the black seeds

in their husks

for a chat