Not Even Close

I dream and dream
then wake and try to believe,
then sleep and dream again,
turn and hold myself so close in sleep
I think someone else is holding me.
I keep that dream throughout the day,
then rush to sleep again.

It is necessary to open my eyes
to the blinding day,
and say what I'm supposed to say.
and necessary to question life,
the imperative of breathing,
the blue burning of oxygen,
the green stamping of roots.
These things beg answers.

But I hold the dream and try
to dance the day away,
with only a glance at passing scenes,
then sleep to loose the phantoms
sunlight shaped.

II

I wish an alien would catch me
and fill me up with something crystalline
from a billion light years away,
then throw me back to earth
in a heap,
in the wilderness,
wet and chilled,
near the face of a stone god.
But I may miss it all,
if my alien fails.

Just think . . .
if I do miss it,
some day I'll be walking
down one street and
there will be another street
I should be on, and . . .

I won't even be close.