Dream Of Mass

Night breeze slithers round your neck,
your waist, a snake, python that ropes
you into its grip, until what you are is the place
you wave goodbye to as you get into the car,
as if you were dressed in old front porch,
gravel driveway and aluminum siding.
The only map is something someone said
once
about a hilltop
in a distant city,
neighborhood that began with what can
percolate and bubble up through manholes,
the old ways, the demands of earth for us
to go on and connect it somehow to sky.
We cannot be anything else but hope
that escape colludes with will
to make something, finally,
akin to brick and mortar, and not song
or laughter or story, cursed as we are
by a sprinkle of time. And so worship mass.
We'll drive once more to that place
looking for something that can be put
in a pocket, and kept in a drawer,
long after we're gone, buzzing,
hissing, sparking, smoking.
And we'll yell from the other side
what to do with it, but only
small children will hear, and
they, too, are told not to go near it.