[Image: “March of the Wheelbarrows,” by JES. (Licensed for
Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial International use.)]

From whiskey river:

Sleeping for Kafka

I heard on the radio this morning that prayers can heal. Experiments demonstrate that cancer patients who are prayed for, even by an anonymous person, have a better prognosis than those who receive no prayers.

A person can purchase prayers from Grace Church in Kansas by dialing 1-800-prayers. Visa and Mastercard are accepted.

I read that Kafka, a chronic insomniac, felt refreshed after watching his beloved sleep. Sometimes he invited her over, just to admire how she draped herself over his couch, wrapped in immaculate rest.

Some speculate it was the dreams of his beloved he wrote.

Thoughts like dreams drift from mind to mind. Some are heavy and sink to the ground or disappear under water where they grow like sea plants, while others are light and glide upwards like helium molecules.

When Jacob saw angels going up and down a ladder, they were merely tracing his thoughts.

Nietzsche said few people think their own thoughts. Instead they are thought. Many people are dreamt and prayed. They are like seashells inhabited by hermit crabs.

Most of us have no clue whose dream we are.

(Nin Andrews [source])

…and:

Gabriel
(excerpt)

There are enigmas in darkness
There are mysteries
Sent out without searchlights

The stars are hiding tonight
The moon is cold and stony
Behind the clouds

Nights without seeing
Mornings of the long view
It’s not a sprint but a marathon

Whatever we can do
We must do
Every morning’s resolve

(Edward Hirsch [source])

…and (italicized portion):

Debtors

They used to say we’re living on borrowed
time but even when young I wondered
who loaned it to us? In 1948 one grandpa
died stretched tight in a misty oxygen tent,
his four sons gathered, his papery hand
grasping mine. Only a week before, we were fishing.
Now the four sons have all run out of borrowed time
while I’m alive wondering whom I owe
for this indisputable gift of existence.
Of course time is running out. It always
has been a creek heading east, the freight
of water with its surprising heaviness
following the slant of the land, its destiny.
What is lovelier than a creek or riverine thicket?
Say it is an unknown benefactor who gave us
birds and Mozart, the mystery of trees and water
and all living things borrowing time.
Would I still love the creek if I lasted forever?

(Jim Harrison [source])

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