is if you ever strapped yourself
to a giant eyeball or tried to hold
a beach ball underwater or thrown up
on a whale watch or listened to every
King Crimson box set at least twice
you know what I mean when I say a crash
helmet’s useless when the crash is in
your own skull. I doubt many of us would do
what Jim did when bears came to his bird
feeders and the end-of-the-world witnesses
came to his door. See what I mean about
the eyeball? The idea is the mind
has wings. The idea being when the dog
runs off in the dark, darkness is your dog.
© Copyright 2018 by Dean Young. Used with the permission of the author. This poem originally appeared in Quarterly West Issue 93.