Yet More Water from the Lethe

Waking to rain, darkness, vague dreams of being asked to hand the blind horse off to a man who needs it in order to more effectively prophecize. Your body in the loose cavern of blankets warm like coals, a memory of fire. Who is singing, what is coming up out of the earth to remind us that we are out of time, need to flee?

Coming to terms with the likelihood the sentences project will not be completed in this lifetime, not a sorrow so much as a frustration with the many distractions to which my attention flies, Peter Pan-like. Cats walk leisurely across Main Street. Buds on the maple trees are like jewels this year, I cannot believe how wealthy I am.

Certain other writing projects strangle off as well, as if it is time now to explore something without coming back over and over to report on it. You wonder about Emily Dickinson's experience of dying, don't you. A heaviness in the air, a desire to sleep that one doesn't - has never, really - entirely trusted. 

I grew up in a forest, lived by a river. Hansel and Gretel is not just a story.

The horses shed, especially Jack, tufts of white fur drifting over the pasture like hints left by angels in this cosmic, non-zero-sum game we are playing. Remember barber shops? We pass on killing pigs this year, we pass on killing chickens. Antique door knobs that rattle and sing, evoking an age in which ghosts were obviously prevalent. Can we not face our ontological loneliness, can we not agree this is what matters most?

I want to undress you or, better, watch you undress, then turn to the small lamp on your dresser - all the light there is - and switch if off and then - in no hurry in the dark - straddle me on the bed. 

I want to tell you something between kisses, but can't say what until we get there, the valley between kisses.

In my dreams unfurling leaves fall from dark skies all night, as if we live under ten thousand trees, a vast canopy of cherry and birch, walnut and pine. 

You always look unsure in your pictures, yet you take them, don't you, as if to remind me you are one of the ones with whom I am allowed bucket yet more water from the Lethe, ever grateful for such helpful - such precisely apprehensive - company.