Then I woke up
from a broken-down dream
and sat up from my bed
as people must do
to avoid dissolution
and peeled off a blanket
and put down a foot
on the cold underneath,
then the other

until I was walking
into the light, shifting
on the floorboards
coming from the window
at the end of the hall
and followed it
as an animal would do
and as I did, as the living
must do, in order
to live, I walked

past the clothes on the floor,
past the thermostat clicking
past the kitchen,
past a counter of dishes
past the coffee maker
past the picture of my grandfather
past my phone charging
past the living room
past my Ikea coffee table
past the books from the library
past my guitar in the corner
past a bottle of meds
past the spider plant dying
past the hallway
past myself in a mirror
past myself in the mirror

then got to the window
and looked past the rooftops
wearing the winter's
early dawn dream-light
and felt the cold wind
rattling the branches
and pulling the steam
and considered

the logic of change
of one thing becoming
another, but holding
the assumption of past
and the premise
that there is in this world
anything concrete

Suddenly, the fear
that the lessons, they come
but they come too late
and laden
with unnecessary loss;
that the wisest among us
have taken, and held
what they can.

Once, in San Miguel de Allende

I remember that night
she came to the courtyard,
emerging from the darkness
like a butterfly from a hedgerow
to float in the lamplight
for an awaited Señor. 

And I remember as I watched her
in her flowing white blouse
and her high platform shoes,
the pulse of my heart in my drunken aloneness—
and my own swish of desire
for another, within.

But how long she fluttered there
anxiously waiting—
as she fussed with her hair
and the purse on her shoulder,
entreating the void with her burnt umber eyes—
I don't know

Only that, there in the desert,
I waited as she waited, wanted
as she wanted; the feel of the breeze
of the paintbrush of Being
blending with warmth the dark shades
between us—

Only drinking deeply,
and in love with the possible.
Only at the knife's edge
of attainment and desire—
here on this canvas,
only now.