Keep Your Peepers Open

Moon Over Raintown / Collage on paper / Russell C. Smith

Tonight, all I can do is keep walking down this dark alleyway. Point being, what else you gonna do? Yes isn’t always easier than no. Each breath is another step forward. If we don’t keep our peepers open we can wind up decades downriver, not remembering how we ever boarded the vessel. Anyhow, the last thing I knew, darkness was all around yet I was feeling lit up inside. Cracked brick walls closing in, and I no longer knew what my mind had convinced me was true. I stuffed my dreams deeper into my pockets for safe keeping—knowing a drowning man only needs one gulp of air. Continuing is what gets us through each moment, and adds more hours to each night. There’s times when everything pops into place. Out night walking and making up mind pictures. Shimmying through sideways crab-walking alleyways. In darkness, and being uplifted by invisible forces. Surprised by life when a month is flipped on the calendar. Being open to the unknown. Sometimes, seeing a bird in flight is how everything makes sense.