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Rudely awakened by rain

Seeping down into my deepest depths,

Saturating the secrets stowed away in my soul,

Pooling into polluted puddles

Which ripple with the drips and drops

Of eternal recurrence, reverberating

A history of soldiers, orphans, and thieves.

It wrinkles my hands and shrivels my spirit,

Stirring desire for familiar comforts lost

And despair for forgotten failures found.

I watch murky new streams

Flood the river of my being,

The threshold between waking and dream,

Impossible to cross, 

I lay down amongst the mushrooms and moss,

Curled inside of a soaked sack,

waiting for the tide to be pushed back.

I can feel my lungs growing mold,

As my body writhes against the cold,

In vain I imagine a picturesque home,

With a warm hearth and woman 

Softly singing my song,

And a kitchen with scents so sweet and seductive,

Garlic and onions and sauce on the stove,

Freshly baked bread and coffee brewing...

Lasciviously I salivate, despite my festering feet,

But I know that this fantasy will not keep,

Even now, I hear a cruel wind howling down from the North,

Carrying on it's back the shrieks of shipwrecked souls and sirens,

Come to steal

My visions of longing.

(written while fasting on the Washington coast Feb. 2013)