Monday, April 24, 2023

"PLEASE STAY ON THE TRAIL"

It might really be true 
that the landscape
of your life 

is much less 
well-defined, much grander 
than you realize;

that the mind, 
for instance
is a territory so vast, 

you can always close 
your eyes and just 
go where you like—

but what good is 
such talk 
when all your exploration 

is suggested, pre-planned, 
and confined 
to the sidewalks? 

For all you know, your brain 
is a rip-roaring,
interstellar band

of wise and benevolent 
time-tunneling 
space aliens;

and your body, 
perhaps, is a 
harmonized tangle

of vibrating, 
proto-conscious, 
intergalactic superclusters—

but such grandeur 
hardly matters when 
everything you are 

is sent fissuring
off on its 
limitless way

to a vastness so 
definitive, allowable, 
uninteresting.