Lonelier Than Seems Necessary

Living we enact fantasy. Are inflected by fantasy? We impose a narrative on life - is that better? But do we choose it or does it choose us? Is it given? The fantasy is specific and imaginal. The successful investor, the poor artist, the hounded criminal. The fantasy (which is imaginal) shapes us the way a map (is any image not cartographic?) shapes travel. We become as the image suggests: we see through the image, as through a lens: and move accordingly. And we end up in the wrong town maybe, married to the wrong man, and nobody reads our poetry or asks us difficult questions. Or maybe we are just lonelier than seems necessary at this late - this relatively late - juncture. But as the lost child dreams of being found, the found child - who is the held child, the fed child, the bounded child - dreams of a landscape through which she roams with wolves and wild horses, eating crawfish and honey with blood in it. There is no middle (no center), which means there is no way out. The backyard dogwood tree is lovely in autumn, its lemon-colored  leaves drifting this way and that and ever towards the ground. We are borne, we are lifted, and yet.