Ordinary Things

Con/Jur/d  March 200?

Last night, 

As you told me this morning

You dreamed of rainbow-hued dragonflies

Seven feet long

a difficult sleep

In your grandmother’s house while  New

England squirrels 

scratched inside

the walls.

Last night I had a hard time sleeping

afraid of a new era of insects 

come once again, 

generated from ebony clouds 

stacking against the sunset of our

drowning world. 

I worried how the giant earwigs

and bloodsuckers would treat my child 

and her children,

woken repeatedly by the triumphant

squeak of vermin finding new paths 

in the walls.

Was this what he meant by ‘archaic revival?’

Among those present, with certainty, the rate of

measurable coincidence, and perceived crypto-

allegiance is replicating like lice and mice in

bleak houses and yards of too lazy, too cozy

to become feral cats, and always summer dogs.

What would a jingle for the Oversoul sound like?

The gale of mythic dragon scales rubbing together

in easterly harmonies,

or the hallucinations produced

by nerves singing their ‘freedom’ from embodied

and castrated cults of cultural conformity. 

Today, fifty years of domesticated caring arrived.

Beneath art-deco lamps, precious collectible china, 

and clothes from thirty-year-old fashion was a desk, 

my name attached and printed bold upon yellow scrap 

with a light blue magic marker- 

A future place, now used, 

for poetry, work, meditation

and, with luck, microprocessed daylight dreams.

In the bottom drawer, amid old leather gloves and

purses, a historical collection of playing cards (even

a bridge deck from a dental lab) and commemorative

knick-knacks was the polished walnut cigar case,

wrapped in purple velvet, of a family member’s ashes.

How ordinary it was, for me to be surprised as I pried

it free, my memory is of a small woman filled with

life and love, 

The box was heavier than I expected.

Old post — that kind of day.

Much love,

Con/Jur/d, 7/7/2022