Registering Light or Dark (a haibun)
November 28, 2006
Delicious dreams
I mumble in my sleep
no memory
Fever – coming on stronger now. Gaining now for three days, delirious fits andsleepless tossing, frantic at random hours. Mind you, body never shivers, mind flashes burning pictures of moments. Some I remember might be called a dream but for the anguish. Too real for a nightmare, the pain, the fever, the malaise gains vigor with each grating snapshot. The unfamiliar seeps with fear, I don’t know howit will end. Each episode so far ends with me waking called waking only in that my eyes crack enough to register light or dark. I twist, fall back into the soaked feather bed drifting, one moment racing a woodencar down bumpy hill, children holler in cub scout knickers, proud with badges, another moment running hard, leaping onto pillars fleeing a unknown enemy ormaybe moving towards one, leaping higher columns tumble into oblivion, my feet slip, slide falling, falling next floating in a long abandoned warlord’s damp stronghold dungeon, somewhere atop a Teutonic hill slope, the moon shows the shackles through window slits. Warm and next a campfire warming feet and drinking from a flask as I mumble – fading eyes see nothing but white robes walking by from time to time.
Memories sequestered
Releasing now
As tea steam
