A Shell Game I Only Occasionally Win

We, the destroyers of time. Did not the book of Revelation allude to time being no more? Rest now beyond time. This and other koans.

The sense I am stuck between two correct things – two places in time – two ways of being and with whom – never leaves. Two hard boiled eggs, salt and peppered with a little left over street corn for breakfast; I mean, coffee is a given, right?

Blisters on my heels bleed through my socks from walking. I switch one pain for another like a shell game I only occasionally win. But this morning – oh the stars – the light cleft from something past!

Dawn as a dam breaking over my tired garden and a few rabbits tasting clover. The memory of water is always lucid. Kissing – floating – swimming . . . on which side of the river shall I wait and rest?

There are ways in which wedding veils and funeral lace are the same. Do we wait until we are dead to alter vows? Only one calls me to account and only one can take me darkly into the sun's heart.

I remember in the 1980's spending hours in my bedroom winding mangled and unreeled cassette tape back into its cartridge. Surgeries were performed, cutting chewed-up sections out of the tape and re-affixing the ends. Heal the tape – heal the music – heal Jessica.

How strange for this gumption to dissolve. Now, the marriage of lyric and note-vibration need not be honored for the understanding of love or its poetry.