Dream, an obit and one.

  I was standing on a cliff that offered no glass or wood  barrier to keep any us from slipping on the loose dirt rock down into the swell of the pacific ocean.  The ocean was blue and foamy and the sun allowed me to see the gulls a quarter of a mile out.  The guide was an old Asian man who beside collecting our tour dollars commanded a respect from his white eyes and lined face that he felt was condescending coming from us hour-long foreigner customers.
Below us, 400 hundred fields down, a group of men waded close to rocks.   They floated heavy iron caskets along the water and I knew they were transporting items of gold and jade and the compartments of Isis in them.  On the orders of another, one man bent down into the waters and scooped a hole in the seabed.  He lifted a great iron casket overhead and I saw that on the coffin plate an ancient man had been engraved.   The metal was now blue so I knew the ore was copper and it's people were homo sapians and the bone flute was an heirloom that died with the sage.
      Down at the the low tide the man held the great casket above his head and shook the bone and dust from it into the pit he had dug with his two hands on the ocean floor.
Our guide began muttering.  I was crouched below him and saw fine black barbs grow out of my fingers.  Our guide said, "I curse all  of you.  Every letter you write shall be excruciating."
The couple behind me were taking pictures of their two grandsons along the ridge.  They said, "We didn't do anything."
The guide replied,"You didn't do anything."
I looked at the short barbs coming from my fingers and was not alarmed.  Another couple, old and touristy--the man wore a blue Pearl Harbor cap and the woman a fanny pack.  He walked away towards the tour bus.  "You're crazy if you think we're responsible for that." he said. 
I walked over to him and put my barbed right hand on his shoulder "I curse you." I said.
. . .

John Metzler carved planks of wood into smooth tables that showed the fine grain of an object living.  An object living that too many of all of us are too small to see as alive when it is living or dead.  John Metzler took old trees and recycled them into art.  John Metzler used a giant power saw to carve the chunks from dead things so he could smooth and sand and varnish.  John Metzler wore hearing protection to save the cilia that youth had not already gathered.
     John Metzler stood with his back to the road feeling the vibration of the saw in his palm and groin.  His teeth chattered and foot sole shook.  A U-haul wagon dislodged from it's horn and careened towards him for 50, 100, 200 feet while John Metsler carved an old tree.  He could not hear the metal of it to his back, hopping the the curb and killing him May 13th, 2010.

. . .

this garden i planted
soil i tilled
grass i beat from dirt
will all return eventually.