Inspiration comes to the thief in the night,
sneaking slow, dripping down the stairs.
When he no longer sleeps but stares
to the blank spaces where no moon feeds light
the mind receives,
domed and amplified,
canopies now quiet.
No bird enlivened bowers
in these lonely hours
when everything is still,
awaiting the next interval of heavy showers.
A tiny light hangs over the desk of the writer,
restless on elbows
words parched and thoughts that require
a personal drought
to become another bout
with its ticking clock counting down
in pendulous distraction,
hiding substance within a capricious attraction.
Lucidity, before the birthright resents me
for a wavering fascination,
a minute turns to an eternity,
searching out the mundane for that elusive quality.
An El Dorado somewhere in this jungle
tempting explorers to go half mad and in circles
through territory oppressed by heavy shadow.
Here, even an enlightened thought can be sentenced
to the darkest hole without a candle to offer repentance.
Through the shades and the cracks,
where the imagination receives the information it lacks
to keep the mind gathering the early hour patter
in trees that form a clearing,
renewing the ideas that scatter
like leaves in the breeze,
scraping the sheath
so that the gleam can emerge slowly,
deciphering the real from the concrete
where nothing is absorbed
of the rain’s rhythmic drumbeat.
It blows towards me suddenly,
with the orphaned scent of forest moss
something that is shared by all those who are lost.
The mountains, garbed and veiled
crisscross the valley
to ensnare, momentarily,
all the stolen bounty the sea receives
and in that liminal time I am lulled to sleep,
albeit briefly, nodding off, a welcome reprieve,
for the words sometimes come through in dreams,
transcribed from some other hand,
that means to become my own,
grasping at inner sources,
I’m tossed another bone.
(Image by Dominick Takis Sr. Acrylic, Oil, Cutout Media, Organic Matter on and behind MRI Film)
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