Thirsty

When I say that progress isn’t linear I mean to say that my house was built on a horse farm. I mean to say that everytime I take a step I could be dancing on buried horse dung or waltzing on top of a horseshoe. I mean to say that when it rains the romantic dreams of a beating heart, apprehension screams its a doorknocker, and the little girl in my heart knows it has to be horse hoofs. The rain is so old that I am confident that it knows the secret of magnitude. It can’t help but mock evolution with its knitting needles just as I can’t help running through the streets of my neighborhood trying to save littered worms with popsicle sticks. I know it smells like dead fish and my mind sounds like the white noise on the end of a tapedeck but I can’t help but whisper: "This futility is so pretty." So is magnitude and desire and the idea of silence. My grandfather who will die in days whispers "Listen closely dear, the most valuable thing in the world is a glass of water." As I stare into his weary eyes I think I can tell you that this is not his secret: for my grandpa who arrayed his hospice room with old photographs and books on tapes of Westerns, his secret is not that mundane. His secret is the one Tantalus has whispered to me in a dream as he discussed the threshold: "just because you know you can’t drink" he says "doesn’t mean you don’t get thirsty."