When we reached the top, we were so dizzy from the thin air we'd forgotten why we had to climb and headed back down the mountain.

At the bottom, clear-headed, we remembered why we had to climb and headed back up the mountain.

This continued for the rest of our lives.

Gradually, the ankle will become the hip, the hip will become the shoulder, because the parts become the whole.

The whole joins to other wholes becoming greater wholes.

Gradually, everything will unconnect, unbecome because of something somebody wrote down in his notebook. As then, gradually, we will reconnect and rebecome.

Gradually, you will realize everything is in your mind and nothing that happens ever happens

Majestic words like maelstrom, preponderance, warbling swirl through my creative whirlpool, pulling in pieces of conversation, tail-ends of admonitions, the lilt of swearing. I live by the calendar, fitting my days into the squares, x'ing the boxes at midnight.

Friday is the wave that crashed but hasn't withdrawn to the sea. I'll compose this in the spiked surf.

The water was clear and the sky, a burden. That clear, opening water annexed from infinity by the murky, swollen sky. Everything the sky held glared and grimaced like sweaty bustlers at a flea market.

And then I look back at the water and eke out a smile before the groaning creak of the sky turning darker toward the night pulls out my grin like a bad tooth.

The water was clear, so clear I couldn't see the bottom.
Lousy sky.

He smoked pipes, ate limes, ate the gnats he swiped from the air. The lions lounged in the front yard. He chose lions because of the theme of pride. He had a rudimentary but certain understanding of pride. He stood at the front window staring at the lions, locking eyes as often as he could.

The doorbell rang. He turned quickly, spilling a squall of wine on the hardwood floor. The lions didn't stir. He heard a knock on the door. The lions stared at him.

"I won't," I said. And she turned and walked away. The generals and lower officers, in turn, followed.

I was alone in that room with the future. I'd only known vanishing past and pounding present. I didn't know what to do with myself. I started by counting my breaths and guessing how many I'd take in a minute. I tried thinking about tomorrow but couldn't. I could only picture a towering wall made of brain matter.

I thought, "Maybe I should've" and stalled again. I closed my eyes and thought about nothing, not knowing I'd sleep soon.

It was Andy from the grave.

"Can you speak up?" Caroline, distracted anyway by something on TV, couldn't understand him.

"I said it's Andy. From the grave. That's the muffling, the grave."

"Well, it doesn't help you're such a mumbler anyway. Wait, do you mean you're actually calling from the coffin?"

"Not really," said Andy, "but I am dead somewhere. I don't feel like I'm in a box. I feel like I'm in a cloud."

"That could be the coffin. I saw it," Caroline remembered, "it was plush."

"That's nice."

"Listen, did you want something? I've gotta head out in...

I retire to a grotto chiseled in a gnarled knot of stone on the continent's edge. The continent is irrelevant. And the stone and grotto, for that matter. Because when the ocean rises, no one moans but me. And the universe is nothing if not a bell for suffering. Ding dong, ding dong.

I used to feel like a bird in flight

I would cut between the trees
and see the clouds from upside-down

I would pull up to the top
of skyscrapers and hop
along their ledges

My silhouette against the moon
My reflection in the harbor

Yeah, I used to feel like a bird in flight...

I remember the smell of wet snow on a blinding morning. Squinting through glare and steam. Battleship twigs wobble in a frozen puddle. The neighbor's bell-bottoms dark blue to the knees. She sank in a soft mountain of snow, but extracted herself with the confident strength of the Bionic Woman.

The crows were flying silhouettes, Japanese ink on a rice paper landscape. The country was preparing for our spectacle. There would be battleships in the harbor, fireworks from the torch, old songs that would not die.

But on this day, in the insulation of a winter morning, we weren't thinking...