Who We Are Now

In praise of futures born in daydream,
glints of sun off tailight chrome, willed,
until our old problem with here and gone:
life marches, man, undrilled, on and on,
 
awareness comes one person at a time,
all incapable of seeing any signs, or
reading any runes to open up the night
into which we spark the dawn each day,

so we curse the physical world
for outliving us in rock, sky
and water, leaving us cousin
to fire as if it held memories.

Untrained today to hear voices
from beyond in old guidance,
or glide along our fate easy
as floating down a slow river,

we rush to distraction, spend
time as slot machine coinage,
and still receiver drumskins
with cheapest, dullest drugs.

An old man starts over. All
exists because he sees it,
eyesight a wizard’s wand,
the summoner...creator.

He codes a new faith, a sea
from which we rise, crash
and return to ocean. Simple.
We will ourselves to surfer,

and talk and talk the next day
into being, all of the best and
worst and inbetween at work
to give us who we are now.

As he walks out the front door,
it is his world, the last alone
that he had feared so long, fearful
of the distance of loved ones,

but it is his responsibility to see
the tree, the smoking VW bug
of the neighbor kid, the dead
lawn next door as it tells a tale

of his alcoholic friend, brick houses
and black driveways arise empty
of meaning, until vision delivers up
a hummingbird. “Yes. That’s it.”

But he wanted to say, "That's me!"
He wanted to shout, "I did that!" Then,
with every step, he allowed another square
of pavement in the sidewalk just ahead.