Well Bottom Blues

You got to be a spirit. Don’t be no ghost

— Rastaman the Griot

consider yourself a ghost   alone
in the woods without other people
television   phone   internet
while life of all kinds continues
around you in green and brown
blossom color and bird song as
something from a dream    this dream

see your self as spirit in a flittering
leaf   stilt still heron    nervous ibis
let the world skitter noisily away
a startled squirrel   and take
your daily schedule with it
understand monks wandering
the wilds    every moment a poem

let the wind and sun peel away
the color and bruises of the skin
chance and society assigned you
no interrupting advertisements
for the lotions and potions
of conformant happiness
let that busy absence   absent itself