At any given moment, there are people digging

there are people dying, there are ditches for

bodies that will one day be twisted in roots.

Purpose, a precious ore among

every spotty riddled dream

is not quite possibly as real as soil.

In the tiniest swirls in the skin of my hand, flecks of soil

are left over from the sweaty metaphorical digging

that I did last night in a long dream

about looking very hard for

something substantial among

a complex system of roots.

In waking I felt like a mole that roots

in the musty forest soil

for plump and juicy grubs among

the dirt. In a daze I did more digging

when I went downstairs in the morning for

coffee and watched it drip into the pot like a dream.

Life is not but a dream,

we must stop and tie the canoe to the mangrove roots

wade through swamps to a raised bank, look for

the food that grows in the soil

return to digging,

that is how it is among

the living. That is how it is among

the mind no matter how detached in dream.

In sleep we are capable of traveling the universe, instead we end up digging,

finding starchy roots

to eat, but no meaning in the soil.

The plow has turned this dirt for

years and years yielding the same sustenance for

body, but the saints I prayed for were among

the missing in the dry soil

of the pleasant and unpleasant dreams

that slowly worked the field over, turning up the roots.

Dig, dug, will be digging

for a Comstock sort of dream

that provides, among other things, roots,

soil to call my own. Until then I will be digging.