We are fragile figures. Our pillows at the outskirts of paradise. Befriended by dreams, the mind begins to process the day in Kodachrome. Once it starts, there's no turning off the pictures. She lies beside me. She's reached paradoxical sleep. I'm still on the outside looking in.

Take me there. Beyond the eyelids, where the mind wanders each night. To where the seeds of disturbance must be resolved within us. Some are strengthened. Others desolve as mist. This is how we survive. Chemical fires burn, become tides of memory. Pass the torch of preservation. Keeping them warm and remembered.

A miraculous routine. Live together. Dream alone. Desolate. Magnificent. My eyes are at the moment the apparitions are shut away. My mind in this place, a stretched fabric. Yet, it's far from alone. In the cataloging of miles and years, I sense an odd fellowship cresting without limit. I thought I saw her smile in agreement from her side of sleep.

~for George Harrison~

Very

soon George, I am bound for
a stilled shaded land, a tiny isle,
which knows the
all encompassing fog,
hurricanes wrath that days linger,
and
though memorable,
never the first image recalled,

but a mind's eye video of
a perpetual sunset,
agonizing silenced colored fantasies of farewells,
each unique and alike though all things must pass,
a benign benefit comfort suckled this old man's
never fully at rest visions,

for the sunset is perfect perpetual,
always setting, never settling,
ever bound to surprise,
our farewell is another's welcoming,
and each of our days an
A-1 slicked continuum,
a sliding circularity
and
we sigh, ooh & aah
at it miracality,
its genteel reawakening
we admit with pleasured honesty,
yes, sunsets are a corridor edged,

somewhere it is always sunset,
nevereverending,
and its farewells
are truly truthful welcomings

<*>

Shelter Island
May 2025