I am close to my heart,

as close as one can be .

I feel it beat, a rhythm, a script

of my living self as the sun rises and sets,

and as my eyes are open to its light;

as my feet feel the turning earth

and my skin the winds of the promontory

whereon I write these words.

The closed system of my body

tilts towards belief in flesh and bone,

while in the nether-regions of my mind

I see lights and stories and the drama

of another existence, perhaps one

dancing on the moons of Jupiter

or in the death-doomed spirals of

a black hole, wherein the soul and my reason

congeal into a warp of silent darkness

and rest there for all time.

Meanwhile, the owl in his hoots

and the crickets chime in their inscrutable

voice of thoughtless murmur

in the black night

and I twist and turn

in a sleep that is troubled enough

to be not sleep at all,

but the congestion of my small confusion

about the tag-ends of meaning,

from the light of distant stars

to the smell of onion soup,

and the solace I might get

is the solace of a man caught

in his quandary:

             What am I,

that I may invent my moments

and make them so real

as to tremble the earth

with reality, and believe that trembling

to be the end of things,

as well as their beginning?.

Then there is waking,

and the pouring-in-light of morning

that covers me with a new reality

and removes those somnolent doubts

and gives me a sliver of human hope,

that I may live the next day

like the cricket and the owl,

considering all that is laid before me

like a dish to be eaten,

with little thought

as to the consequences

of that feast.