Mark States
APPROACHING STORM
Standing on edge of glen, watching the storm
come in, giant thunderclouds and a jolt of cold.
Standing on edge of storm, where rain
falls in sunshine, where bright and wet
are the senses.
Standing by the window
watching truck take away boxes of forsaken dreams and
vapors of roasted asparagus, the world of books
and academia that kicked me back to reality
unceremoniously.
I'd pulled your letter out of a box of books.
It's 1995 and you're on your death bed
writing to your son who'd just lost 3 finger tips
and in this hallucinatory dream
not of peyote but of high-powered sedatives
I stand on the top of a refrigerator
and threaten to jump to my death
onto the hospital bed below --
most assuredly, death exists
in the space in between ...
Standing on the edge of understanding
how time tells you
far better than you tell time
even now, in 2009,
and the jolt of cold felt watching the
approaching storm
did not start as the flap of butterfly wings
half way around the world --
it was drenched in the sadness of knowing
you'd been dead three months
before I'd slit open the flap of the envelope
and my dreams flew out like emaciated moths.
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