Like a monk without a habit,
I steal down bike lanes in snow,
bridge the gap between was and where,
thread the needle through growing hair.
I take country lane walks to ease
local fears of clerical deals. They
see money between righteousness,
and this bike reduces zero stares.
My habit left me in high school,
looking for better climes and North
Face, hanging rocks to affix desires
onto, a local color recognizable.
A slush fund rises in my bike’s wake.
I tread the ice like I had just left my bike
and walked onto a thin mat of death-defying.
I read like hagiography warning letters on signs.
I bled watchdogs onto the lake’s bank,
going back inside to become President.
While the dogs ready the charge into
potentially icy, watered terrain, their leader’s
left and their senses heightened. Mentor, when
do people become ready to become leaders?
When the snow had fallen, I thought
Their paws would break the ice. But politics
did it for me, and I suddenly noticed the
revolution of ice plates underneath me,
cold water hot to the touch like a hot topic.
I lifted my arm above the floe and bent it
at the elbow in surrender and sign,
to let the dogs know, to let them out.
-In a shopping mall, holding fragments of the rest-
Ice curled around my bicep, flames of a
different sort as my forearm dances semaphore,
a language the wolves know by heart –
war hawks and eagles flying overhead.
One of the wolves charged at my arm and
bit the hand, his canines locking into
the latticework of tiny bones like machinery.
Mentor, it was like I understood nature and not.
-In a field in England, between one place and the next-
While the rest of the wolves breathed on
the ice gripping my arm, the wolf mawed
my hand and pulled – like ideas out of the brain,
mauled into submission by the overseeing id.
The ice broke, the creativity flowed, and they
carried me to you in this nifty little cabin
you made. Shifted into a dream wherein
I own this wolf now and you are real.
Writing off potential negativity, riding out
the storm, you glare at me with spikes coming
out of your forehead, saying my crown of
thorns will come, in this life or the next.
Epilogue
My wolf got me dinner yesterday, and
it tasted fine, my tastebuds greeting
the new day like every other now:
with a fresh face and wan light.
I eat and write on Mentor’s porch,
petting my wolf and wondering about
the news of the day, blissful.
A Tesla shifts slightly in space.