I was waiting
for something to happen

I knew something was about to

It was hanging in the air
in the room
where I'd drifted into an afternoon slumber,
listening to Terry Riley's
Persian Surgery Dervishes,
the 1971 Los Angeles take,
on a sizeable volume,
Marcel Proust's A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleur
with all its 554 pages sunk onto the heavy Indian blanket
that covered me,
my old age wandering the dim halls
of Morpheus' inward castle

when something had woken me up
with the suddenness
of a car crash on the highway in icy conditions

- and with that same suddenness I realized,
thrown onto the stage of here and now,
that it was the sudden silence
after the finish of the L.A. version of Riley's piece,
that had brought me out of my slumber,
as sure as a heavy hammer on an anvil,
leaving the Paris take of The Persian Surgery Dervishes
hanging there in the room
in a space bursting at its seams
with that fateful silence,
seconds before Riley's 1972 French Surgery moment
would detonate
all over my space and time
and my fresh wide-eyed attention!