In An Old Dream's Kingdom

 

I bought the tide's last claim
on a martyr's whim and sank my runes
where heaven spit the cruel dust.

When the sad product blazed its appled flight
the sleek sun removed my marks
like sentences from its fixed tablets.

Fate, with its simple energy, fuses
inertia into the future's promise,
leaving the eye its ample desert
strewn with unmounted gems.

I knew my pace when its reflex
matched the sun's intended dance
and its careful moves fit my story,
unfolding from idle desiring.

Only when the dry thatch burned
and my roof exploded to the rain
did I waltz through my useless walls
and swing on my gate in the garden wind.

I'm stumbling in one of my life's
dark seasons against all the objects
familiar to my sleep, wide awake
in an old dream's kingdom.