The Good Life

I dreamt my thoughts had turned to water, no longer earth, air or fire. I saw the sky burn with embers jumping from a pinon branch cradled in a hiker’s camp. Your hands held my head upright. I followed the arc of your finger across the horizon. Clouds bathed in blood as the sun rose from its deep, black sleep. I thought my world had turned to desert, dried out from eons of shudders and sighs. I felt prickly pears stick my ankles. A trail of pebbles patterned the sand’s darkened swirls. Dunes mounted like cumulus clouds, tawny ships of shifting shapes, fraught with emptiness: vacant spaces waiting to be filled. I could not spot the errant rains. I felt my eyes turn to blood, ragged irises blue with flames. Our planet rages in fetid bondage. Fossil fuels belch invincible masses of smoke. In Sweden, I tasted wild raspberries, as worms inched over the bubbled surfaces. “Harmless,” my friends said. “A meager call of nature.” And so we spoke in Scandinavian proverbs. The good life is where you find it. Home calls deep within dreams.