drifting out of no where, nesting
at the base of a stem, in our fuchsia
a sun feather vision presages the dandelion seed
I'm in a wine barrel scribbling fast, notes on Run Silent, Run Deep. Not many of us have gone over Niagara Falls. The sonar is beeping, but I choose to ignore it.
When lots of people are awake and doing their jabber wocky, the spectrum crackles. But late at night it settles down. At night outside my window there are no wine barrels, no one is listening, and my Jules Verne era periscope has no image enhancement. I find this truly comforting in a universe crammed with telepathic signals.
I might have sewn the emperor's new clothes. Or this might be a dream. You found a file folder with a pressed dandelion? We might share a two way mirror. A bit of absurdity on the way to the next floor down, signed Chariots of the Gods. There is a subterranean rumble.
And more than equaled by a crash that rattles the house. A lightning bolt has vaporized the wine barrel. Disconcerting.
Anyone looking out there would come up with only a train whistle receding and anything left, a yarrow bloom for instance on its spindly stalk, possibly mistaken for a rat's tail twitching. Before finally disappearing under the kitchen table. Thereupon in the pilot's seat, in a dimple duly recorded by the flight recorder, is an initial warning: Beware the tar pit.
For lack of a steam paddle, the river of time begged a boat and now, under hazy skies, we hear a distant chorus of frogs. 'Twas in the days before the scenery changed, and all duly reflected in the barber’s mirror.
Real magic in our two way mirror is more than skin deep. Swing free sweet chariot, my liberated ape in high limbs above, with money grubbers below offering up ball bearing garage door openers. I have followed the caterpillar's undulating fur into regions of the universe unimagined by scorched earth educators. Origins of our ancestors before anyone thought of time. That same distinctive thread, scaled by a bobbing spider, runs through things and comes out the edge, dangling like a tired worm, the sense of it inspiring a gauntlet of elevators, railways, nefarious dreams and tall buildings.
The history of the earth, up until my sandwich, was no chasm for a trail of ants. Compressible words had been scooping up years by the billion and squishing them. Perhaps more illustrative – the bubble machine is running dry.
Up there resting on the peaks of perception, skipping over the dull bits, in an afternoon of the creek, were skeptics and scofflaw scientist renegades joining for lunch, to discuss something altogether more important. I am delighted, and held harmless.
Mirror, mirror
mirror bright
with your spider on a silken thread, bobbing as expected. Up and down. Most people, if asked, would find you difficult to remember, like things kept in certain records at City Hall. Sewer pipes for instance, passing in connections scarcely noticed under numerous front yards, quite the opposite of laughing gas. Nature will not be ignored.
Nature is impartial. Reality is one of those ideas it ignores. Open the dandelion root folder and find our night train tooting its horn. And we can say, “Up Periscope!” The wine barrel comes rolling along, like the desert's tumbling tumble weed, and what makes the cut boils down to degrees of desiccation.
Through several shades of honesty I have to say, the preamble had to be done before I would be allowed some corn chips and cheese. Always just as I'm contemplating the snack, and I'm already over the barrel, gushing over the next adventure, it demands now or never. Use it or lose it, write it or move on. There'll be no pause for my convenience.
Well, I have no opinion. It wouldn't matter. The me standing out in front of this ocean spigot is less than a drop on a windshield in a hurricane.
In the depths I guess the pressure is sky high. An immolation of daisy chains is at stake. While birds I know in the backyard recognize their names that ought not apply, yet strike a balance for some phosphorescent telegram. You know, of course. Of the sort seen daily in the hands of strangers passing down the street, and they're talking in serious phrases to people no one can see. Are these people crazy? It's a matter of acceptance. Sage brush dust is closer than the stars, and just as pregnant. A coyote howls. Everything is working fine.
As I said, I don't have an opinion. I just work here.
the seed floats in, breathing softly
barely nestled now, in the hollow of a stem
