Miles of Plato Roll over the Deck

AIR  we believe,  twice or thrice I came here before.  Love is a dimes worth of trouble.  I can sing.  Let not the failing heart fall here again,  What is moral?  Have we gone insane? Do we shut ourselves in our houses out of fear?  I used to feel free, now it’s like going under house arrest.  What do you say?  Why not drive for twenty-four-hour, stopping only for gas, have a smoke, maybe pull over for an hour’s rest and when you get there give a ring  You have a room reserved.  Coming up for air.  All the way to the holy mountain and then some.  Alone in a cave.  Send the Greek air back.  The world of animated sphere, our profound airborne meditation.  We find a crack in the currents.  Miles of Plato roll over the deck.  Take a deep draft of art and scribe it on parchment,  Is not the air forever young?  You walk across it and enter realms of the wasp.  Here an Athenian sky feels fine, ripe enough to pour into a chalice created from gold foil.  Leave fiction to the Aspen Community.  Continue breathing.  What impulsive winds cause our trees to sway?  Sullen coastline catches the first hint, of sunlight.  Oh, how audible—doves – capes –The dying emperor struggling to pry open a window for one more look.  Airborne sheets of death amuse our dreams but their reality drives me to the library shelves.  The dirty foam of a poem, the filthy floor of a fat novel, the sad images in a travelogue.  No wonder the air is thick.  I feel a constriction in my throat.  Violet moonlight struck last night as I lounged on the deck wearing a stocking-cap.  Monotonous virus, why not disappear for a decade?  Go back to the 4th Century bat cave where you began.  I need air.

*He is an American poet and memoirist