Desert Inside

Hardness has become a way of life. A test of metals.
People think I'm all better but I'm not
even halfway home, and it gets worse before
it gets better. Now I'm in a small desert hotel room
again, feeling sorry for myself, again. The whirl turns.
The body struggles on with living, determined, always
optimistic. But I can't seem to locate any terrain
remotely near to happiness. Too many impossible
worries about futures both far off and near.
What reason do I have to start the day? I've learned
late in life that mornings are for writing, the rest
of the day for less verbal arts. A walk clears the thicket
of words. Just another drive through amazing landscapes
that dwarf everything human, having been around so long
that every pebble has perspective and worries not.
It's an offense to carve your name into sandstone
cliffs, a soft act of hubris equivalent only to
a glacier's fond erosion of everything that supports it.
I'm back to petroglyphs, beautiful mostly because
they've endured, mysterious in content, unfathomably aged
little icons carved into living rock's patina or crust.
What have I ever left that could endure so long?
Airy nothings. I dreamed last night that my wallet
and passport had been taken away, and not returned,
everyone feigning ignorance. For some reason I ended up
at a garage sale the size of a city block, arguing
with incompetents. I don't know what that means. Perhaps
I feel trapped amidst civilization's garbage heaps.
It's true I don't like feeling caged. A blacktopped road
is an icon for me as fond as any Beat's, as any petroglyph.
I feel trapped when I cannot travel. Cabin fever of the soul.
Not everything has a given name. Or needs one.
You hope for good weather, a clear day, nevertheless you go on.
The dream ended in fields of frustration, everyone jeering me
as I jumped into the sky and flew off the way I can in dreams,
flying above the street, evading telephone wires and other low obstacles.
The people below in the city's canyons began to look like black crabs
trying to pull me back down into their bucket of ordinary
aggravations. But I was flying above their heads,
and they could not follow.