each night, dream
   a dice roll
where the forgotten
rallies to be heard
once again or twice
why would any matter
rise up to settle in
wells of memory, hope
even fear will tell
semi-true stories
   if misunderstood
by the organ that knows
   references
we all made up

on the edges of where i live
the trees end in a perfect line
  standing against the new
houses built on hard designs
and i hated them all, on walks
where they leveled the deep
woods where my fantasies first
found footings on slippery wet ferns
  gone now, sold to hundreds
  humans, family, strangers
at night, in the still remaining
trees i walk among them, families
in lit spaces, closed in, doing
the things that families do
  and i can tell it:
the smell of fresh laundry venting,
dinner, with garlic or an outdoor grill,
car lights, pulling in and a kid running
out to see what he might get from dad
  while a part, despite
  the vast desolation
  they brought, oblivious to all
  life that thrived before them
i find my heart
  breaking
not for the history they took
  or now missing dreams
but for the simple stories inside
being alive as they might in boxes
with all their new dreams meaning more
  far more, than my memories of all
  the life they will never know

some things must be allowed
to unwind what the mind cannot
in the body which knows how
to find the deep state
  we all seek
toward the fullest release

today i thanked god or whatever
might be above us that we reach
toward a heaven in a crescent stretch
held in the flesh of earth
   which orbits
skewed centers still
   in motion on
   long tracks of dice

repetition is never the same
as reality, messy as it is
   trying to create
   what you must
know - repetition is
   domination
not as living canon
   which bends
toward the Absolute
but instead the authority
of all you will