Yesterday it never hit ninety because the monsoon was in full effect, and so the night too was deliciously cool; sleeping weather dreaming weather deliciously. (If this was an actual poem I couldn’t double that word.)

I had complex visions of things that never happened, and then told the stories of these things, in separate visions and in great detail while we all got high and enjoyed each other.

Do you remember that time I ran out to Kansas and rented a place and got mail there because it was the cheapest? Neither do I, but an hour ago deep in the REM I believed it had happened. I woke to sleep and took my waking slow, asking myself if I had done that once–really, no? And laughing as I woke. Even now before the coffee I can still taste the reality of that mail. It was a five hundred dollar refund check from Amtrak that finally found its way to me after years and years.

I can remember another train, the coal train, stopping outside and the driver getting out, and realizing that I knew him, possibly from that time in Kansas, and saying hello.

After I laughed I rolled over and looked out the window where the cool air was still coming in. I could see that the sun was up but when I rolled to the other side and checked the clock it was a little after seven, and that was perfect, because I could close the window and keep the cool air in.

I had to get up, to catch the other windows of the real house if nothing else, but I wanted to get up. I was rested, and happy from the marveling laughter of remembered dreams, and feeling young.

What I really want to do is tell you all this just like this. I want to live and experience and relate it all in some fashion, sometimes blatant and sometimes elliptical but always with joy beneath, a joy that is the polar reverse of fearhate.

I say to you truly today (you will be with me in paradise) that this is the point of retiring as soon as possible–I tell you with the same wondering laughter that I don’t need the aggravation of being employed right now!

That was the life I meant to have built and may still yet in time, though time is not on my side any more.

This is the nature of rain and in spite of regrets I am blessed and grateful to have this taste of it; pray with me that it is a foreshadowing.

This bliss moment begins the last day of summer and I mean to savor it especially, because tomorrow at this same time (a godly hour now and an ungodly one then) I will be back in the bloody maw of working for a living and fully engaged in the true work of trying to transcend that wretched state.

The canonical image of the poet is of one who forsakes all that, unwilling and maybe unable to deal with showing up on time faithful to someone else’s schedule and priorities, incapable of thinking about mortgage rates or pensions or insurance.

I mourn the loss of that feckless canonical poet in me, but he was never really an option. Oh he tried, for a while, but he woke in the autumn park with his sleeping bag soaked through and he shivered and vowed to find a better way. That was no Kansas. That was real.

This life of work again tomorrow and making careful lists was the best he could come up with at the time.

It’s tragic my dears! And forever after going forward, that exclamation point with stand for the laughing waking joy only. It will give the otherwise useless punctuation mark something important to do.

I’m glad that much at least is decided.

Loop back. After I laughed I rolled over and looked out the window where the cool air was still coming in.

I re-lived a moment from yesterday looking at the clouds when I realized what a deeply beautiful place this is to be and breathe–from the geographical side.

I do not live in a town. I roll down the dirt road first and then the paved to shop for food in one. Starting tomorrow again I do someone else’s work in one. On the cultural and societal side it’s a terrible nowhere town. It has no center, no courthouse, no core at all.

Most of the people in it came because they literally received orders to do so. Most of the people that stay do so because they have no better option–it is the best they can come up with at the never-ending time.

Compared geographically to Kansas, Yuma, or Sand Rock this is a literal paradise, especially if you are a javelina or a roadrunner or a canonical poet who has no truck with the societal element and can live on imported and internally generated culture.

The skyline of stoic mountains and the evolving tableau of clouds join to form the sky of heaven. If the sky of heaven were not so nourishing, if the river running through the valley between them were not still so wild, it would be uninhabitable, to me.

But they are, so I have been here a year and will be it seems for another.

Beyond that, the elusive better way must must must be found.