Looking Backward (with Tess P)

Perhaps looking backward for the truth and measure of one's life is useless because the shepherd quickens and disappears like the light that breaks the flight of starlings; or truth knocks like the woodpecker on the house; you leave the house to yell, Get off! Go away! and she's flown far beyond the trees. Last night, I tossed in sleep as if my limbs were branches heavy from a slow, tender rain that freezes in winter. In the heavy waking when "why am I not sleeping?" is the question, there, what I took for milk was mud, what I held as dirt was sweet and strange, a truth so twisted and spiraled, one need only climb into the clouds and it's quick to take your hand.

Maybe tonight with a new, warm mossy sleep nestled deep into the curve of my back, I immerse myself into clouded thoughts of the places I feel the tiredest. Eyes closed, I wander straight into the weight of a continuous rain that does not ripple my rising surface but swells into a stretching lake that mimics my reaching arms – sediment filling me to waking as my face, like a satellite moon, reflects the promise of the night’s swampy sowing.