morpheus awakes

i am homesick
for everywhere.

i wonder how the great hunters do it,
as i tread the raucous leaves, a clashing
cymbal in the domed sanctuary
of birch trees.

surely anything with ears
is now hiding from me,
safe in the golden latticework
of crackling caves
and crevices.

we are a loud and boisterous species;
no wonder earth is so timid to respond
and so often deaf to our pleas.

above the falls, I talked
with a man and his dog.
he told me of his father’s
old ice creamery, and
showed me pictures
of a cadillac he bought in
1963, blue and beautiful,
which he still drives
in the spring.

along that same river
was a tree. it spoke to me,
saying, “there once was a tire
where now there is only rope,”

as it has said endlessly since
it lost its blessed tire
to the sea.

i miss scuba diving.
i miss upside-down earth.
i miss being on the other side of the looking glass.

i miss decompression, hovering those fifteen feet
below the surface of the ocean and waiting
for the nitrogen to leave my skin.

…i wake up from dreams these days
like someone coming up too fast.
my head goes through something
like the bends.
reality boils underneath my skin
like bubbles of nitrogren.

i have to take those fifteen minutes each morning,
lying quietly underneath the sheets,

becoming accustomed once again
to brain and flesh and heartbeat,

convincing myself, this is better
than life underwater.

I breath the air from ground to ceiling in a deep, deep sigh,
and lie there for a good fifteen minutes.

just decompressing.

you have to work for your calm,
like climbing a mountain:
straining muscles at first,
hands calloused;
then snow-heavy peace,
and miles upon miles
of horizon.