623. THE PAINFUL GARDEN WHERE ADAM MET EVE

THE PAINFUL GARDEN
WHERE ADAM MET EVE
('Talismans From Forever')
It was not just a lonely thing,
it was a BIG thing. Justin Mimeo,
Andrews Dolkert, Roger King. They
each will live forever. Once, (here I
am dreaming now at the end of the
Industrial Revolution), there really was
a rosy-fingered dawn, beneath the
new moon - hymnal songs, choir music,
some off-key ritual of sermon and chant.
Aligned as we are to nothing at all, I listen
for new words : 'raise high those roofbeams,
oh carpenters, for here the Groom comes in,
taller than a very tall man.' That was Sappho or
someone ages back - I bet - declaiming a new
pact with a featured old Lord. Tired. Alone.
-
I am asleep at the side of a roadway marked
'Innovative Way'. Beside me roar trucks filled
with cargo. They were not passing like this
last night, and now they have awakened me -
to something, I cannot say. Another world?
A different one, at least. I find it impossible
to situate myself in this world. Odd...
like a mosquito, trying to find the itch
it left behind on someone's skin.