After a time, pain becomes defining, it becomes who you are:  I am exhaustion.  I am pain. One examines the philosophy, the sociology, the spiritual dimensions of pain.  One attempts to escape it, tame it, defy it, deify it.  Anything.

Trying to retrieve dreams is like chasing bubbles; the moment you grasp them, they dissipate.  People gather to examine everything I’ve done wrong, all my mistakes.  A long, dark corridor; a black dog; a puff of dandelion.

                     august heat
                             the roses
                             bloom again

After a time, pain becomes defining, so that even in dreams one is in pain, or astonished at the lack of it.  In dreams, stairways become mountains, or, the opposite – one dances gracefully, painlessly, in a cloud of gratitude for the ease of it.

Walking the dogs, grasshoppers keep crossing our path.  They are huge. The dogs ignore them.  The air, hazy yesterday from forest fires, is clear today.  Blue air.  Dragonfly.

                     sun at the bottom
                     of the pond ~ the goldfish rise
                             to the surface