Alison Dreaming Of Me *

He shares his apartment with mice and bats.
Expeditions of goldfish with sharp spears
trek across carpet hunting fur spiders
living in the corners and dark places.

Beneath vine, tendril, he lives in a tent
seldom venturing out. Sometimes he lifts
a cloth flap to empty an oak bucket—
his waste water, his garbage, his latrine.

Once a day he unzips patchwork screening
and takes into his tent a wooden plate
of fruit and dried meat that the creatures leave—
offerings from the jungle apartment.

He’s a shadow in his tent. Fingers ring
against rusted strings on a wood guitar.
Damp has gently turned the guitar’s fretboard,
curved its body, colored its singing tones.

But the animals—the mice, bats, goldfish,
even the fur spiders in their dark webs—
bring their daily offerings to the sound.
It is their part in the strange, magic place.

Wild civilization, such as it is,
continues in that jungle apartment.
No change of state, just a warping of tone.
A wild man living wild in the wild life.


......................................................................


* That’s me on a rare
excursion outside
my apartment tent,
a typical look
of befuddlement
caught by the webcam.