Living in dreams

The dead do not die 
When you expect them to. They live on,
Ghosts trapped
 In the minds of those, who loved them, feared them.

The living don’t live 
When you expect them to. They exist
In the trudge of reality, 
Living in their dreams. 
Dying in their lives.

Ghosts live in the dreams of others 
Family friends and lovers.
And the living live in their own dreams
With lovers friends and family,
With strangers exotic places a hopeful future,
With the past of their mundane world.

The dead don't die,
The living don't live
Because of dreams.


Unusual places I have been

Each with their own moment
 salted into the web of my memory
A tenuous painted contrail 
A trail traveled many places
The smell of a place evoking

It is the one stool ramen stall 
next to a small westernized Chinese hotel In Wuhan
It is fool's gold sparkling on a dreary day
 in the cold rocky shallows of Donner Lake in California 
It is the dry smell of a late summer day
at the hot train station in Havre  Montana 
Each a unique serendipitous memory, each a thread 
One of many woven
to be clutched in the hands of Lachesis 
Measured and imbued by a fate
An unintended interesting life.