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This is


by Darryl Price


nothing. But it could be something. 
I don't know. We'd probably have 
to agree on at least one 
thing for it to turn around 
and face us. Then it would 
have to be named, set free. 
We could watch it fly away 
together. That's a portend to the 

blinding future.  All of us go 
into the unknown alone. But it's 
all been done before. A zillion, 
trillion times. By people braver than 
me. Smarter than me. Better suited 
to the inevitable sorrow than me. 
Clouds go by. New clouds form. 
We all look up and say, 

hey, look at those crazy clouds 
go! Everyone gets taken away. No 
one is allowed to stay by 
your side forever. The papers got 
it terribly wrong. Sometimes you're the 
trickster, the Cheshire cat, and sometimes 
you're just Alice. But it could 
be something. That's the point. We 

don't have to accept the scientific 
notion without question. We don't have 
to play with shadows on the 
smoke polished cave wall to fall 
deeply in sleep. Or even fall awake. 
We are creative every time we 
do anything. Dreaming is a building 
you can go to work in. 

But the end result is a 
baffling mixture of memory and memory 
and memory. It can't get much 
sadder. So why do I want 
to take your hand? Stand still 
in the pouring rain? Not care 
if I get drenched? As long 
as I'm with you? Because it's

right. It could be something the
world has never seen. It could 
be the same thing the world 
has always seen. I don't care. 
As long as I'm with you. 
Because it feels right to me 
in all the places I am
being alive. Because love is you. 



Bonus poems:



Dances from a Mountaintop

by Darryl Price


We came a very long way only 
to find out we were not that 
far from where we once started. I 
liked the unexpected dances we stole under 
the taken for granted moonlight; everything receded 
into forever, looked like nothing but coats, 
covered in smashed galaxies and ashes. But 

you looked like something else with all 
that bright light on inside. We came 
a long way to receive so many 
nasty scars from the different clouds rolling 
in. You know what I mean. It 
doesn't matter what you call this thing. 
It happens. It happens to all of 

us. A long way to realize we 
were given only stories of yesterday to 
keep us company. Someone please just give 
me a story of what is happening 
to us right now. Instead, you'll burn 
them down to a wicked silence like 
a coven of clocks and there they
 
are back in your pockets the very 
next morning. Nobody ever said the cosmic 
joke isn't funny. I've worn out many 
pairs of shoes on this journey, haven't 
you? Some people only live for the 
more expensive replacements. We were not that 
far from the bridge of lily padded 

trees. Isn't that the way it always 
goes? And for some reason, I'm still 
rowing this little boat across the vast 
oceans to deliver your mail to the 
scratched stars for you. I wouldn't be 
doing it at all, but you asked 
me to, and I said I would. 

I'm not a liar. Far from where 
we started, we changed into other people, 
stepped out of the mirror, fully formed. 
Right remembering of what to do next 
doesn't come flowing out of your fears. 
It can't. It won't. We came looking 
for vivid love, but that was so
 
much bigger than our hearts put together. 
I remember now. You looked like everything 
I had lost. And there you were. 
We were not that far away from 
having it miss us. I guess I 
didn't know I'd been hit until it 
was too late to ask for rope.



Wild Rabbit

by Darryl Price


Does everything have to be done on 
our knees through far too many tears? What 
kind of world is this? You handed it 
to us before we knew much, or were 
ready to pay even the smallest 
price. Is it any wonder we lost 

our way in so much violent traffic? 
What were you thinking? Either we would 
swim or drown? Who gave you the right to 
treat us so cruelly? One minute you're 
having the same hunch with the same friends 
and the next you're being torn apart 

by another group of much wilder 
animals. Once I was sitting on 
some cool ancient stones watching the sun 
fill in the paint by number trees when 
suddenly a little wild rabbit 
came and sat down ever so softly 

right next to me. I decided for 
some unknown reason to touch it. 
It let me gently rub my human 
hand over its ears and down its neck 
and furry back. Neither one of us 
said anything to blame the other 

for anything that was happening 
out there in the noisy world. There was 
no need to despair. No one knows where 
we are. We both had our enemies 
waiting somewhere in the rest of the 
day to attack us, but for that one 

kind instant of time we were just 
being ourselves, two together, so 
silent and at peace in the playful 
breezes, smelling the faint aroma 
of some mix of summer's bursting with 
yellow petals, flowers. Birds watched us 

with singular eyes and jerking heads. 
I stayed close as long as I could. Then 
got up to walk back to work and the 
little wild rabbit got up, too and 
slowly hopped away, a short distance, 
but not before giving me one fine 

look back. I smiled for the first time in 
a very long time, felt like maybe 
whistling a made up on the spot tune.  
I would hate anything to happen
to that rabbit, but I know at least 
one thing that did. And it wasn't bad.


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