Covers

I shiver in my sheet sandwich

barely functioning and grateful my sore muscles

are resting and relieved

from the rigors of my day.

 

They are a tent

sheltering against the tides of aging

where I can still feel the illusion of youth

that fled my body ages ago.

 

It is when I have to move,

walk or work,

fantasies over my invincibility

evaporate within my mind.

 

Pains are the thorns that dig into the heart,

reminding of my mortality

and how I can’t escape their fire

by moving as the mere frail life

my consciousness must confess.

 

But then I hold my pen,

suddenly I am immortal,

alive where there is no misery,

able to slip into a story slipstream

rushing in my mind

across a landscape I invent.

 

Is this paradise or heaven?

Have I touched a sky’s secret chambers?

Doesn’t matter

because even if my legs are slow

within the tendons of creativity

I am a leopard

racing effortlessly and endlessly,

pausing just when I want,

happily reaching for the rebirth,

which only a writer truly understands.