Day 776, August 17, 2022

When Dreams are Like Memories

Sometimes the things that are painful become pleasure

and it is through time and repetition 

that a different kind of serenity appears 

like a mirage in the distance. 

Is it something truly there? 

A UFO, 

an animal in the underbrush, 

a shape passing under the surface of the water. 

Sometimes pain is a substitute for love. 

Life is a great thresher laying waste and carving furrows in the dry soil. 

I want to press my hands on the brown grasses and bless them. 

There is a dance for water, 

there is a dance for healing, 

there is a dance that evokes the voices of the dead, 

and there is a dance performed on the upturned blades of knives about the joy of living. 

The sky is a confectioner’s delight, 

a barista’s gift, 

a sketch of an ocean. 

After a long day, 

the evening is short and reduced to removing one’s socks and a dream. 

I remember a booth, 

cigarette smoke, 

gin, 

and it was as if all the world was viewed though a pane of glass. 

There is a voice 

and there are hushed voices, 

there is the smell of the carpet, 

there is the tentative creak of a door. 

In my dream, the back wall is lined with nearly famous writers 

all acting like bad students in Sunday school. 

There is a man I will never swim with again, 

and in the distance a bell. 

There was a time when you could cup a day, 

a week, 

two weeks, 

in the palm of your hand. 

There was a palm reader, 

but I never relinquished my fate, 

and therefore I am like a quiet duck paddling on a vast lake.