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