But for the time being I am in the center of everything that screams and teems.
And it’s subtle as the most intangible reality.
For now time is the duration of a thought.

Clarice Lispector
Agua Viva

Boomer is living on borrowed time.
He has very little he can call his own,
so he borrows as much as he can.
It arrives from the sky in tiny packages
that glance off the struggling grass,
brush his face and become exactly
the just-now moment of a thought.

Boomer is in love with words,
even their droplets of darkness.
All night and sometimes in the day
he mumbles words. He conjures
them out of paper and they
skitter and lurch away into short
lives, meaning nothing to anyone
but him. When he sleeps the words
fall out of line and make a run
back toward chaos. And they are
glad to be scattered. They were
no good for each other.  

Boomer wakes and looks around
and laughs – he knows he’ll find
his words again beyond the deep
blue channel, past the islands,  
outside of time. And also dogs.

Boomer will be an excellent ghost.
He loves to be quiet. He’ll be a spirit
of wood – of furniture and windowsill –
the vague squeak of a floorboard
when no one living is up and moving
through the dark house. A phantom
of ambiguity and a slight tingle
in the nerves. So he practices
being forgotten and unnamed.

Boomer will be a friend to sleeping cats,
focusing puddles of sunlight on the rugs.
His thoughts will float like motes of dust
and make the room a little sad,
though no one will remember why.
And somewhere in eternity,
old Boomer will be asleep in his words.

J. Kyle Kimberlin
Creative Commons Licensed