[was a dream]

Me:
In Seattle
Koi:  
In Encinitas                                       
Me:
talking to koi

        my friend’s back yard pond

They who dry-mopped the hairy floor, cancer is available at every scale.
Moment to moment, the battle can be lost: white cells bowing out, replaced by dust mites. Baptism of time available, wrung and hung to dry.

Other angels displaced. The fallen ones, who kicked the hospital bed, hot
with refusal to narrate yesterday’s vigor yet present to hand-dance a body.

The voice said, “Dear Lover, I am afraid of being hit, not of being an experiment.” I wondered—why was the bed talking, not the oracle.

I wondered if I would have to hire a yard guy, or suddenly flip my bed, its contents ricocheting off narrow walls. No bucket, the rope inside the well is a tourniquet.

A toothpick breathes down the limb. No flowers allowed, wash all vegetables in filtered water only. All meat, like soil, eventually diminishes.

Dear jealous lover, this exact life will be unfaithful. No need for tweezing hairs from walls thick with knuckles. Mechanical sounds peel back the graft from the host. The countdown started pre-birth. Call and response:

Are you ready to go? Oh thank you, is it my turn?
Grateful for the knock before the entrance.
 
Rapid response, at lunch, galloped—but not too quickly—kicked with offbeat timing.  Wrestled loudly, free of the frame.

What of the bed?