things and places

You wake to rain, you wake to blue skies. You wake to spring only to wake to winter the very next day. Wheels spin with-in wheels. The story runs down and is born again, only with different words and details. The day breaks away from the brittle edge of a dream, and you are there, among all the things and places. You are there, again in the world.

It is the same hands, enmeshed in their tasks and deceptions. It is the same face, plus or minus pain or pleasure or all those years. You shift in your skin, a tide of lapse and hunger creeping inside your flesh. You slow to the hum of these familiar leanings, the creature that clings to the other side of all those mirrors somehow loosed into your life. You chat and banter with all these strangers who claim to know you well.

Day to day you note the difference. A spilled coffee, a skipped meal. Some meeting that runs on and on. Some mistake you know you will be blamed for. A flower by the freeway, a bird on the line. Here you are, as the season slips away. Here you are, alive in this fading light. You sleep, knowing the course of unseen stars. You sleep, knowing the difference in your dreams.