Photograph Of A Photograph

In dreams I tell second hand stories
about people I think I’ve met before but haven’t.
The memories of meeting them
seem realer than the dream itself,
but when I wake up I soon realize
that those memories were just a background
around everything.

I worry about what that means
when I am walking around
some street I’ve clearly walked before
because now I can’t be quite sure if
I’m remembering the past
or just a picture of it
altered with a razor blade.

It’s easy to be afraid of the dark
because within the dark
is every possibility all happening
at once just like a ball of rubber bands
all wrapped together into layers,
as if each new idea is held back
by the old.

Now it is cold and I am standing on a pier
out here along some river in Indiana
whose whole identity is based on misconceptions.
The dragonflies are everywhere and killing
all the smaller bugs quite viciously,
but I consider myself lucky to be watching them
live just they way they always have
tearing all the horseflies clear in half.