The Earth-grown Ponderous Man

Blankets still warm from sleep. One must wake despite the arthritic grip of preference, inflamed and swollen. In my dream, a man in the company of his young son laid down the pavement, struggling to breathe, trying to say, “I am fine! I am fine.” Sending his son to get help, I asked the man (the earth-grown, ponderous man) a spray of medical questions, to which he answered, “you may take care of me.” Of course, there was nothing I could do for him outside of kneeling at his shoulder, engaging his eyes of awareness, and painting the thin air with disappearing ink.

True or not, I began the day saving a life.

An odd warmth for this time of year settles just beyond the big lake. All signs still point toward autumn like a train that must arrive, one way or another. Yet morning's damp cloak hangs as a white sheet – the grave-clothes of suburbia's best intentions. The earth sighs so deeply that I can smell its breath, that sweet prurient smile giving way to decay.

I know things in those moments. I know to arrive here and say this. I remember to gut the mind and reach past the entanglements, on towards the waiting halcyon. The inescapable palpitations are tapping out the phrase to nurture.

How open my heart! How loud its cries! The poetry paddles through the mystical river finding itself always further than imagined. My dear, don't listen to my lies; I've taken a lover I can't touch and the only way to give her back is through . . .