Golden

Box that’s hidden,
Terribly tough
To find, easy
To pry open—

In it, a life.
That’s the hardest
Part—who were you
Worth enough to,

That the details
Of each moment
Had their moments
Worth detailing?

The tiny box
Holds glass, stories,
Gold memories
That nicked your hands.

No Dream That You Could Take

Like some kind of creature that opens
At a touch, unfurls, then closes up,

Only to show you, if you’re watching
Alertly enough, nothing’s enough,

You had a day you could not reduce—
The plan, to make the most of nothing

Went off the rails when nothing itself
Got involved. The ratios altered.

You sat, and dozed, and jolted awake,
But dreamed no dream that you could take.

Mostly, you weren’t. Meanwhile, the day was,
So that later, in the greying light,

You could feel cheated. You had nothing
To show yourself in memory—time

Took its opportunity with it.
But wasn’t this it? More gone with it.

The day, it turns, could not be reduced.
The thoughts were as compact as they seemed.

Then Memory Moves On and Other Dreams Move In

Wake only when the dream gets stuck,
Jammed like an old film projector.
You have to set the one going
Again, to not be forever

In the other. The smell of old
Wood logged and made into this barn
More than a century ago,
The smell of tackle and harness,

This spot where you want to pause
And inhale the last of that world.
It’s all a compound, all injured
As memory tries dredging it

Out of the massively tangled
System of synapses, it is.

Obligingly

You have a day

Where all you do

Is blink in and

Out of being

Aware you’re there.

That’s all you do,

Hours in your chair,

There and not there,

Going nowhere.

The day is gray,

Obligingly,

And the latest

Ways of joining

Language weirdly

And vividly

To the world

Refuse to join

Meaningfully.

Now, where were you?

Variations

On disaster.