The self-help book says life
is a set of competing priorities:
If this is more urgent than that,
do this. I nearly flunked out of
high school, ignoring such advice.
Teachers always giving homework.
Parents signing me up for clubs.
Friends wanting to study or hang out.
Problem was, I couldn’t get over
my dreams: dawn would come just as
some great mystery was to be revealed,
the alarm sounding, life’s exigences
pouring in through the windows.
If I could just trap that dream
in a jar, I might emerge like a firefly,
beholden to nothing, a light unto myself.

Mr. Williams said I would amount
to nothing, if I didn’t get my head
out of the clouds. I must be a disappointment
to so many. Nearly forty, I think I
get it now, what they were all
so antsy about. We arise to a to-do list
a mile long and think salvation
is a mile down the road. So much ink
and blood spilled over that simple mistake,
I can almost understand intolerance, even war.

I have a recurring dream that I’m in a garden,
so vivid I taste the jasmine and mist clinging
to the grass and petals strewn about like
jewels. There’s a decrepit wall made of brick,
slick with moss; If I can just scale it, on the other side
I will find…perfect, eternal peace. Always,
just as I gain a foothold, I suddenly awake,
as though some part of me knows there’s no wall,
as though the self-help books, the Bibles, the poems
need only say, If it’s more beautiful here than
there, stay here, for goodness’ sake…stay here.