Clouds Boxes Walls

The clouds came to earth for my head.
They told me I should be daydreaming
of how to view earth as heaven,
how to view each person as god,
how to merge fairy tales with reality.

This has everything to do with the truth
and manifesting my own truth
and blocking other people’s disagreeable truths.

I never learned to think outside the box,
but I did learn to make the box’s walls invisible
with the application of imagination.

Pain ended up pushing the box walls outward
to encompass a wider world—
this was pain’s pushing reality away.

My box’s west wall sits in the Olympic Rain Forest
and goes through the quick, wet cycle
of decay coupled with rebirth
with bugs and rot and reptiles and birds and spring blooms.

My truth is people I loved died.
The pain I felt at first crushed me,
then it prodded me outward, seeking answers.
My answers. Even when I did not know the questions.

The clouds came to earth for my head
they whispered why-nots,
they rose high into the sky, pie shaped,
encouraged me to reach for them,
said one way out of the box is up.

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copyright © 2019 Kenneth P. Gurney