Relatively Harmless

They sit at the end of the peninsula. The bones
of what I suspect was once a pier
where the fishing trawlers that populate the shore
held court and commerce.

That was a long time ago.
I have been going there for a decade or more
and there have only been these bones
sticking out of the sand and water,

tough old relics. Survivors. A kind of art now
with their own beauty.
When I visit, I often simply sit, gaze
and daydream.

The truth is, I daydream more than most.
No vague imagining, my daydreams.
Mine are vivid and strong.
For a time, often long times,

they eclipse the world I live in.
Places. Situations. Love.
Full of fire and every sense God has given me,
they fill hours of nearly every day.

I cannot tell you if this is a good thing
or not. I can only tell you I have lived there
in my daydreams since I was as a child,
and now, as an old man,

I live there still. Staring, not into space,
but into places my heart lives
so vividly the real world seems pale,
and yet, somehow, I live happily in both.

Do not ask me to explain it.
I am comfortable with the mysteries
of life and God. I have no need to understand
what cannot be understood.

And so I live in multiple places at once.
Pleasantly insane, I imagine.
but full of joy
and relatively harmless.

About this poem

I really do daydream deeply and vividly and often. I always have. If I am staring into space, you can be sure I am elsewhere, in a place as vivid and rich as where my body might be at the time.

This started out as a poem about the bones of life/lives past. Then took a complete left turn. Muses are so fickle.

The picture was taken at the tip of Cape Cod.

Tom