Ramses II

offers me a calm I wasn't prepared for,

when he, by the elegance of chance

or synchronicity

crosses paths with Eduardo Kohn

and his book about the thoughts of trees

- and through my awareness

the king still breathes

in the vicinity of the world,

like Wildwife Anna beside me

in The Great Ship of Dreams,

the mild light from the reading lamp

leading me down after her

into the inner halls of Morpheus,

as the night opens the stern truths

of metaphorical realms

in a star-studded breathlessness

- and some locations live

by and through themselves,

intensely present, without signs,

as I, when ever, run up stairs

and knock on doors

in transparent times,

the people of which, having, in several ways,

ceased,

or semiotically gathered

in the codified sum and substance

of erratic lines of letters

of long-since closed diaries