Lent

Sometimes in winter it is cold and
I do not wear a coat to feel the wind and its chill and it is
Difficult to not be paralyzed, but I
Hate it (the paralysis) enough I force myself to walk untouched
You see,
The cold is only what you make of it
And if you wish it to be gone, it will be so.

Sometimes I see myself in a mirror and
I don’t recognize my face, it is strange
And foreign and I
Feel as though it, the sight in the glass, is not me
Like I have just woken up and I can not remember what the dream and what before it
I love those moments and I hate them too, reminders that I
Don’t know the look of reality, that my mind is linked to the extant
World through organs of tissue, that
At any time I could awaken and find
All of this gone, and myself a child again,
Free to the morning light.

But this is a slumbrous hope and an childish dread, all that is seen -
Too minutely logical to be a vision and my
Rest too shallow to harbor such revelations of
Bliss and terror
The music always familiar, time passing slowly in the late night.

I see you and I
Wonder at your neurotic pitted elegance
If I am to be alone all my life then I am dead already and
Falling to sheol as I write

In my dream you were sleeping and I took you into my arms
And I whispered into your ear that I love you,
Your mind and your body and your soul, but
Then I walked to the ocean and laid
You in a cave for the rising tide to carry away … because sometimes in winter–