King of Bedtime

I stayed in Monteverde for three days
pulling weeds from a vegetable garden

and sleeping on a hard floor. On the fourth
day I walked down the sun baked rock

toward a pasture where cattle grazed
far from the barn. I lingered and listened

for the call of their farmer, dreaming
that I might follow, fade, and find

a new home off the map. The line
pulled at my chest, back up the steep

path through jungles with vines that
strangled giant trees, tugged by

unborn children who dreamed of
growing up in a row home off of

Locust Street, the 100-year-old brick
growing moss while the rain slinks down

into the cranky Philadelphia sewer.
And isn't it strange, Ariel, how you search

for horizons that aren't there? How the future
is a vacuum that the past rushes to fill

with anything that isn't secured to bedrock?
The night fills with the voices of souls

waiting to be reborn, the child's chubby hand
smears the watercolor world as you create it.