Now I lay me down to sleep
but I don’t. Instead I lie awake,
or between two states, enough
that I wonder which is dominant
from instant to instant
and despair of determining
between the two. Is this
a third state?

I pray the Lord
my soul to keep but wish
that there was a likelihood
the Lord did not exist and that I
could make my own decision
and create a new world instead,
one devoid of super-rationalized thought
and kept simple, easy to navigate; is this
the beginning of that new world?

If I should die before I wake, what then —
does it continue, a rogue existence
for someone else to stumble across,
or is it gone with me like a deer’s hoof
on dirt after a rain — maybe a ghost
of the deer left behind for someone
to shrug over and then rise and go on?

I pray the Lord my soul to take, but where
shall I go then? It makes just enough sense
that when I awaken I am compelled to write
the myth of the place I am forced to go:
rain-washed; trees standing by with no birds
in those trees; a silver mist everywhere
just above the rich ground.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T