Patrick Meeds

STRATEGIES FOR LIVING

Some people dream of being a river.

Others imagine they are a flame

or a large spinning wheel.

Things that do their best work

when no one is watching.

Things that power, that consume.

I have slept the sleep

of the sun in wintertime

and dreamed of filling the sky

with light. I have held your hand

and felt the soft tickle of fireflies

in your fingertips. I have seen

light filtered through curtains

of rain falling over open water.

I have swum in the warm glow

of the moon. My mouth is full

of teeth and tongue; of spider webs

and fairy tales. There is no point

in talking about the time we waste

sleeping without dreaming.

The time we waste awake

and unaware we are dying.

Patrick Meeds lives in Syracuse, NY and studies writing at the Syracuse YMCA’s Downtown Writer’s Center. He has been previously published in Stone Canoe literary journal, the New Ohio Review, Tupelo Quarterly, the Atticus Review, Whiskey Island, Guernica, East by Northeast, Door Is A Jar, Jokes Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, Doubly Mad, What Are Birds?, The Main Street Rag, and Toho Journal.