Dream Series: Hitchhiking Specter

Cricket strings strummed music over my heart sense,

in a rush hour spring haze of a road map remembrance,

as the hitchhiking specter took my leave.

Riding shotgun, he stared deep within me,

—smiling—

telling me there’s a shadow just beyond our sight,

and he’s seeking overlapping tracks of memories alive in the sunburned incense of afternoon,

and he travels with a gambler’s wit.

He’s waiting for Time∞Thyme

—who’s to say which—

and when She arrives they will creep back across the earthquake’s breath.

We both spoke of knowing loneliness and infinite sums and the crushing enormity,

all there in the crowded weight of a marble’s blinding light,

held in small fingers,

held up to a window pane,

catching light,

—a Universe waking—

each of us bruised and born in our own rites of passage.

Aside the dirt road,

there was a spontaneous spark of imagination,

breathing quiet mathematical magic in combs of honey bees and hills of tenacious ants.

I stopped to eye a hand carved tree,

my fingers running the bark and blade traces,

my thoughts blush,

—awakening—

to a black-eyed bird’s unexpected song,

appreciation to embers igniting her twig bed,

her cuckoo clock nest silenced,

she free to sing or escape the hours of her day.

An unearthly legend lassoed me,

pulling me in with her silver locks,

singing me the route of a road weary specter’s fever burning,

his gentle hand want,

for a small of back to embrace,

and I walked dirt and thorns,

leaving a blood-let path,

that sealed me to all who have gone,

and those yet to come.

E.A. O'Connell