Two-Thousand & Nine is a fancy
three digit number, [with a zero
repeating in the center of a seven
space] Bookend way to say: a year is
here, a year is passed, and year
is near. Near what? Is this but
a gravel path in the Florida
countryside promising a Destin-
ation? Is it the jagged buttes
West of the wisest Redwoods;
The Titan Grove! The Sequoia! The Sea
on a side and to the East some Snow;
Does it melt in the rift of the valley,
cool reservoir off a diverging stream, squeeze
curve, cut, but quiver cold among
the evergreens? Or is it Signpost
erect and proud, some Singer in a bar, plastered
upon its Face a mile-marker or a village
name like Baghdad or Bombay or
Babylon, an icon of a thing or itself
a Thing? It’s an assumption I make
that to breathe out and take in
is a neutral white actetype like a
scattering of leaves among the great
Roots of a Tree, ripped from their source
and dropped gently back to the Earth—
It invites the Decay, the compost; the Cycle.
It Readies its soil and Remembers
its height: the tip-top of the tallest
Green canopy and Light—
Light bursting through! Soil’s
smallest morsels some Torrents
of rain seep and mud, and thrust
up through the Center
of the trunk; the Innermost ring
in a series — that by which Man can
count the precipitate settling between
[though ever-never separating]
the Truth and his Dreams.
+
I stood at Sunrise, Yeasayer
sounding. Sleep only as much
as it takes my alarm to sound.
I licked the Envelope, and mailed it
last fall. Two-Thousand & Eight—
divide the bookends by Two
to find the three, or the three to
see two stumps stood in stages.
Precipitate an amount different
in one from the other; the one’s
Reality becoming its Hope. Or
the pace of a diverging stream
curve and cut but quiver, both
the Evergreen and some weeds.
One month, to
day['s] Last light.
About five hours past when I prefer to stand from sleep. My face feeling bruised if from the deep-sleep and dig dig dig in my pillow-cheek. This is usually an indicator of either how much I needed it or maybe Shiraz, (though it might’ve been a Malbec).
After deciding I won’t work much today, I walk slowly into the kitchen to boil the water for a Press of Columbian and hope that my sleep-in contacts — which crunch with every blink — will find some moisture very soonish.
On the way through the living room catch two squirrels co-gnawing an acorn on the windowsill near my desk. Spooked by soft-steps, they scatter and disappear into the remainder of Fall’s leaves, which decay and transmute into compost. Spring is near, the skies are a silent Grey, and my being is a maze.