I'm skipping around a bit.
Here we are now in Vegas.
For all you gamblers out there.
"I'm dreaming your dream when you were unconscious.
And I had to prop you in a wheelchair
and push you across a hotel lobby, dense
with insomniacs gesturing in a cave of neon light.
The narrative of their lives.
Coinage they're occasionally repaid
from a slot machine in Vegas.
A vague sense of having done something
without remembering details, they pull down and down.
No night, no day.
They stopped for coffee, a smoke, and a bite.
Trying to turn you around to get you out of the empty elevator.
I've gone up maybe a hundred, maybe a few hundred flights.
It seems our floor is missing.
We need to regroup, except that one of us is indisposed.
As your leader, I feel responsible
for this delay in our arrival.
I will the action forward.
I find your proper bed.
I ice your face, I cover your body,
then I allow myself to think of my own needs.
My room service, my damp fries.
Finally, I'm alone with the television.
As you are, I remind myself in the least frightening way
possible, coming out of anesthesia,
to your next medication, a heavily brocaded bedspread
and drapes drawn to keep out the light
and the mountain range, which, now that I am peeking,
seem to be closer.
A glance inward at the set provides a snapshot
of male adult soldiers in full battle regalia leveling
artillery fire at rock-throwing children.
I must be mistaken.
I must be tired.
I must be lonely without you in an otherworldly sleep.
The gods had given them the Nile.
It was only the foreigners, the strangers, who needed rain.
It's plain how many purely practical duties I
could attend.
Wash you, for example, or for a prayer.
For a time, holy being in the service of trees and pasture
and the home of lions, antelope, and sheep.
Those strangers seemed far away and harmless."