Protasis

In the wind, the harvest thinned,
On the ground what locusts left and
Birds we hailed to carry our messages skyward.

At home now,
Buried with the quiet where poets sleep off their dreams,
The idle musings occupying other fingers,
Lands within the land
To track snuff on the abacus of inhaling.

It rushes the mind and some slobber out of the wigwam
Vomiting vision where coals glow in eyes and on foreheads,
Another eye, straight up and straight down.
Worlds open as celestial animals sharpen their horns and sparks fly
And the human hum is a steady drum.

Bent over low in the library stacks
Rolling the questions like an opium ball, sticky and black.
The rapture passed.
The people home, sleeping off what was eaten.
Trace in a book, an exposition on realism, Suburban Symbolism,
The lake where ice is too thin and no activities are allowed.
Who taught us to fear the weather and fires sipping through dry trees.

Disasters always sound like trains coming,
No tracks, no warning but an inferno of perfect rotation, debris, slip faults, water and fire.
How low and how high does the straight arrow fly?
The stage is the fleshy arbiter.
Trained speakers take well considered parts and the team rehearses,
Takes tickets and plans a film version, action figures, theme parks,
A story with legs and a future.

Pay and pray, we are with you widening ones, meals are included.
On the warm sand, a chaise and a towel, you close your eyes to the warm orange sun
And the floating cells go by your closed lids as if
Your tired fists put pressure on a sleepy vision, but
No tricks are necessary here.
You are comfortable and relaxed.
You are ten feet tall, sleeping one minute
Nodding the next,
The shape of the sea is a sound, the air a smell.
The constancy is a body with gravity to make you turn and roll now and then
For a place like the crook of your arm to lay your sleepy head,
Your slightly sweaty self.

Your lovers, past, present and future make gossip with missing pieces you supply.
Drunk, high, tied spread eagle to the heart stone that turns the world
On a sacrifice of blood.
Never mind…
The pages of the novel flash away, the lights dim, the stage is set,
Let us begin.