When I think I want to be a kind of soul released from my body of suffering into the air between airs, one who’s floating over a great river beyond Time’s so-called beginnings and endings, always in a constant state of play, curiosity, and letting go within a morning mist that’s hiding trout that rise to the surface of their world to swallow themselves, often risking everything for a mayfly,

my consciousness sort of unfurling and thinning as I near the collective I came from without even thinking about it,

I again remember as a kid catching ants in plastic, see-thru containers that, because of the condensation that collected on their insides, taught me not all things are bound to evaporate into the vastness of a flash

like the one that sometimes comes when you’re meditating and is often accompanied by a popping that parallels thunder accompanying lightning.

Before returning to the mouth of the great river of want, where I’ll lie back the way I always do in my favorite chair when no one, not even me, is looking hard enough, I’ll think I’m already everything I could ever want, always this falling back into myself. Just before I start to crave a pint of cookie dough ice cream and tell myself I just have to have it.