Waking Wishes

Down go 
the dreams in
retractable smoke

in come the fans and critics, rushing
for optimal seats

shift the muscles and roust the bones:
loom your bipedal bends
back into the streambed and hope
that today's stretch of river
has been tended by the gentle,
the wise, the ones who know
giving and taking as two
of a hundred textures in the geography,
as one of a thousand relationships
of existence,
as numberless among the infinite
memories that make us human.

Be one of those.

Tend as best you know
now.

May another's waking 
be kinder
for your presence on this shore.