Epic

I have chased the world down rabbit trails,

leading to caches of axioms that no one

remembers except dead philosophers.

Metaphysics was my cup of tea at nineteen,

still a nightcap at sixty-seven, inebriating

the shadows of dreams drenched in Pantone colors.

The heat of night fueled my insomnia,

warmth the ultimate stimulant, stout stirrings

of life. Yet sleep is death, cold, cold death.

From the sills of windows, I have stared out

at arbors, bushy green, enormous branches

stretching across the roof, unstoppable growth.

Rabbits nibble the sweet stems of grass, noses

bobbing like nervous buoys on angry seas.

I eat only beauty now, a diet of few calories,

but plenty of weight to gain in the silent,

slumbering hours of dark. Poems pop up like

desultory dandelions. Blow away their spores

and you have the makings on an epic, if epics

did not flaunt meter and rhyme and ancient

axioms of war, endless sailing, mortal betrayal.

The world chases me through the pages of Homer,

who never existed except as a committee of oral seers,

imagining heroes in armor, their black blood flowing.