PORCH CHIMES THINKING    (4-3-1990; North Park, San Diego, California)

i listen to the porch chimes clinking
as a hearty spring wind plays them today
warm and steady
the wind massages everything
as the sun s heat
increases the circulation in all of life around me
stimulating animation in birds  bugs and leaves
yet here i sit on couch in shade
perpetually ill for so long now it seems
obsessed with my gradually
ever increasingly fading away
too weak to bear the touch of sun these days
i sit here in fever  in fear
sixth day
persistently unravelling ever further still
with all my incessant coughing
all my actual and existential deepest fears
cannot and will not clear me
over these billowing mountains of clouds
looming upon my immediate horizon
though my daydreams still dream on in vain
of one day  of someday
soaring up there
high above and beyond
my ongoing doomed  dark fate
and all the temporal worries  concerns and fears
of this challengingly overwhelming world down here
which always only seems
to inevitably bring me
right down here  back into me again
but here in the meantime
behind this hearty spring wind
somewhere at it s other far end
perhaps a tropical storm
or more likely  only my mind again
blasts down in dark destruction
to peripherally mesmerize me here
from thousands of miles away
here in this present moment
of semi escapist s momentary relief
with the visually hypnotic
soothing  peaceful  magical song and dance
of that windblown cottonwood tree
across the street
locked tight in it s prolonged  dazed trance
of transcendent timelessness
as i continue listening to
these porch chimes singing
clinkingly above me here
wherein i simply and quietly
just keep on daydreaming on
until i ve completely
daydreamed myself
far enough away from me
temporarily at least
here once more again
today