Nostalgia for the Present
In the wee hours when nocturnal sprites
visit slumbering bodies and prod them awake,
making them do penance for deeds of the day;
when spirits visit the living, hoping to glimpse
again the beauty that bound them to earth;
or grays arrive in soaring crafts of light, searching
for human specimens to kidnap, probe and analyze,
before leaving them again in their beds;
when the pineal gland floods the brain with DMT
and a portal opens to all the other worlds,
I lie in bed between them all,
fresh from dreams but not yet awake.
Here in this temple, at the hour of angels,
I feel a strange nostalgia for the present,
that unfamiliar place between past and future,
the space I strain to know
but somehow could never enter
until now.
I remain there an instant, the blink of an eye
or glint of starlight, long enough to see
where I once was in this immense web
but now torn free and marveling
as the hole I left closes over without me.
But now I’m in the human world,
grateful to find my love nearby,
and the cat purring to my touch:
caught in the net of memory and dream,
warp and weft of time’s vibrant, gleaming lie.