Dreaming Time

Deal me out another pair of hands,
A mind less kind...an eye I can throw at will
To intimidate myself in the mirrors of days yet to
dwindle...

and if there were another eye to keep time,
to hold it at arms length and pummel it
with cursed and bruised knuckles,
I could slip all these mirrors into a frantic, faraway river,
one lashing its way through lives I've never laid a finger on,

and then perhaps the shards would hold back the floodlords,
divert intentions and drown them in a wavefist,
drown them all...my riparian dream-smasher.

but...
If I am only given this tongue to see with,
the one I've drawn through the dampened dust on my way out of town,
then I can not taste fire.

Yet time...yes, time
burning itself for you and hills of nowhere...
is up,
and beyond the stars I raised
as a child,
and is just now snapping their branches
and putting out their fires...
and I do taste it.

September 7, 1998