Lost lines, resisted in the night,
conscious resistance in the night,

not sleeping, so
not dreaming,
certain this
is real.

Now it is day, and I call the thieves,
again, all ye, all ye outs, inscape
the outer darkness, pitch me your plot,
show me what you got,

series of forties. Days and Nights,
rain and fasting, days and years,

forty steps and forty miles
forty winks and forty minutes,

ten fingers clapping four hands.

all nonsense compared
to the work of forty thieves.
We had something adding up,
before surrendering to sleep.

The universe was taking shape,
it made all the sense in the world,

for a while.

Time set, 9:17 and the first direct
sunlight pierces the oak and dapples my room,

as I have no complaints,
I have no room to boast
of tuffing my way past losing

anything, from where I sit this morning,
life on this pilgrimage, if we agree,
pilgrimage is
not religion, not new age of water
and fire working in tandem to make us

serve the dams and serve the fires,
drive the engines and prune the trees,
shear the sheep and **** the calves,
and milk the cows,
grind the grains and knead the dough,

think in tiny sticky sensory arrays pointing
soft from sharp and hard, feeling fit
loose or tight,
these bonds,

this time, … my frosty morning,
not cold enough for a fire,
I’ll use that consumption knack,
thus loosing
another half-dozen Keurig cups,
for the seals and whales who are

building an unsinkable plastic refuge
for the polar bears to use,
after the Northwest Passage is open year round.

9:31…

Beyond the palisade,
out yonder,
over yonder, where the line is drawn
on the wall of our valley,
where each high water winter left a line,

bearing witness, to the saying,
" surely we live on the wreck of a world"

and surely it was no work of our own,
especially,
now, pinch a little thought, any point
that feels
just right, a child laughing - random that.
Stretch it out.
If this happens to be forty lines long,
abstracted, pulled into your time from mine,
that’s fine at 9:42, I have two minutes to make it so.
Or let it go. And go see what is so funny
at the breakfast table.