Fat Man's Dream

There is a tree,
a tree outside my window,
a tree absorbing the late day sun, its nude silvered surface standing alone in this day's first bitter chill,
a tree, at rest in a season that sends snow flurries into the air that swirl and dance with the wind but never fall to the ground.

Its leaves, a distant memory now,
its promised new growth,
its hope for the future.
It stands, simply waiting,
its luck, the weather and the place it takes root,
its girth and height, the measure of its courage,
its flexibility, the key to its longevity.

It needs only what it it given, and
it is enough.

It does not covet or envy as I do.
It has no need to see or be seen.
It bears its scars proudly even as I hide my own away in shame.
It moves with elegance and reason in the wind as my paths are often irrational, awkward and lacking in economy.
Its branches bend gracefully but seldom break, even with the weight of a fallen snow.

It is after all, safely planted, even as I cling to an ever more precarious foothold on this earth.
It is only a tree, and I am not.

Fat Man's Dream

I have a thirst for death.
I own this dim craving for permission to finally rest, safe and away, alone at the last.
In that private place,
gone is the pressure to perform, reproduce or even respond.
As I drift there, life seems a great and outrageous effort,
an ongoing act of cowardice,
a tragic fearful misstep,
a senseless campaign
against an impregnable wall of drama and confusion.



Don't read despair, read rehearsal;
preparation for life closer to its end.
I've lightened my load in this readiness.
I have fewer promises to keep.



I shuttle between diligence and obsession
producing a blessing or curse,
victory or defeat,
an act of genius or infirmity;
a man with a lifelong ticket to ride again and again
across that thin invisible line.



Reality marches in heavy boots outside my door,
knocks loudly
and runs swiftly away before I can fully confront it.
I hear only the humiliating laughter.
I see only the back of that retreating prankster.



Are these the thoughts of a sane identity?
Sanity seems, after all, to require a positive connection to the world,
not baseless suspicions,
those unworthy thoughts treading the hallowed ground of reality;
not pessimism,
the unlucky ideas of a marked man among marked men
who share the abiding faith that everything will certainly go wrong.



As I struggle to find my still distant place next to the rest of us,
aging, weakening as each moment passes,
I wonder why I should tread this water?


This morbidity,
an indulgence stolen from those truly in extremis,
those more deserving,
it is a luxury, safely hidden, treasured.

All that remains is crust,
I savor it, the soft easily digestible center long gone.
All ahead fades to precious little,
my perception enhanced,
as this rarity of days seasons my melancholy.

Beached, I navigate in the shallow tide pools from whence I came,
cognition in tact, physicality on the wane.
Age adds and subtracts, it threatens us.
Walk a clear, truer path.
Make the ledger balance or take terrible losses.

Even a wayward glance at the wall clock produces anxiety.
The second hand blithely sweeps away the remaining remnants of my life,
the minute hand gradually purges the world of my ilk,
the hours, they pulse by with undeniable power
as I am propelled toward the only possible end.

I remind myself that no thing of great value,
no good or noble work,
will stay or slow this vengeance.

Life and this world part company on a hard schedule mercifully
unknown to me.
I have no life plan, no map to circumvent it torments
as the seemingly endless uncertainty gradually becomes more trying than the final event.

Yet I cling to a selfish hapless hope for personal infinity
made possible by the missing surety of life's exact dimensions.
This desperate desolate prayer
somehow overwrites my reason.

I live on.
all