MIND'S IN A WHIRLWIND...

Dust Motes
by "OBSIDIAN!!!" [Excerp fro, "Zen is Now" C. 1991]


alone i walked
down a cobblestone street
the rain washing the
sound of my feet
beating on the slippery pavement

delicate shafts of moonlight
break through between the
stalagmite overcast sky
the stars are distant shouts
behind murky clouds

my thoughts are murky
and brown like the
ale i consumed
in some smoke filled bar
i forgot the name of

my lover's gone
and i don't know why
she wouldn't say
she just stood there
in her oversized plaid sports jacket
stoically brooding
behind luminescent green eyes

the embers of a
once smoldering fire
dying out leaving them
in the gray ashes of
hazel patience

i stumble upon
a sidewalk curb
that the city officials
decided to raise

i stagger into the
belly of some darkened
alleyway and offset the
delicate ecological balance
of its nocturnal inhabitants
cats purr and rodents
noisily scamper away
their tails knocking loudly
against tin

i threw my head back
to drink the nurturing
milk of the murky stars
and ponder my lot in life
and ponder yours

just then an opportunistic wind
whips up the once unseen
dust motes around me
just then i

as i watched the whirlwind
eddies upon eddies
spinning about me
in some ancient dance

i finally understood
that we were only
two dust motes
whirled together
by the wind
and that it shall never
whirl us together again