Je Ne Regrette Rien

 

Here is the door you did not go through.

You, ghost handed, 

the handle deaf, 

non-days gathered,

a luggage pyramid entombing clouds and afternoons

discovered centuries later 

by fictions wearing anvil boots.

Come, recover here as the iron rails of empires

rise and intertwine, cobras

reciting the Romantics

with voices quilted from collected rhododendrons.

Stay with what is real,

the blistering sun, or the blue ice calving

every next minute 

into each moment's astonished respiration.

I love you.

I don't love you.

I have never met you.

I can't live without you.

What use the playing cards of a ferret scrying in a tumbler?

There is another door,

an infinity of mirrors,

One True Path

and a million sherpas hauling sermons

up Everest for nobody.

Forget this door, Fortunato its drunken ticket taker.

Walk away,

go home, 

slip yourself into a vase bed and bloom wildly

between the cracks of dreams.

Rise, 

regret nothing,

and proceed in any direction

jubilantly,

automatically,

as even the slightest blade of grass will, like a deity.

____________

for The Sunday Muse #187.