On the Best of Days

 

He could imagine a clean, bright, spacious mind,

As plain and pure as the white November sky,

Across which armies of well-marshaled thoughts

Paraded splendidly, in blameless glamor,

 

Instead of the higgledy-piggledy retreat

Of a ragtag, shrapnel-studded crew

That passes, on the average, workaday day

For a train of thought – a travesty of a mind.

 

He could even get there, for minutes at a stretch –

That place where everything is grist for the mill,

And the mill moves evenly, pushed by limpid water,

Never rushing or ceasing, grinding as fine as sand.

 

And why not all the time? He didn’t know.

There might be one or many thousand reasons.

He was, after all, a cracked, ungainly creature,

But his mind was infinite, at least on the best of days.