The City of My Comfort

You have to leave the city of your comfort 
and go into the wildness of your intuition - Alan Alda

The City of My Comfort

the city of my comfort is
unplottable on Google maps
too small to be seen
a city  within the shell of a hermit crab
a place where I can pull in my limbs
become invisible
just another empty shell on the beach

the city of my comfort
has a uniform of
plainest white or crazy tie-dyed coats
things are sterile
things are contaminated
things are in carefully controlled flux
everything magnified 400 times
light refracted through bottles on a shelf
days marched out
obedient binary soldiers
of chaos and boredom

the city of my comfort
has cool marble floors under bare feet
here it is alwayssummer
all the knowledge of the world
all the words of the world
for me to twist and fondle in the dim light
smelling of ink and paper
of scriptoria and sumi brushes
a place of reverent silence
filled with scritching pens

the city of my comfort
is closely bordered by grey and pink wagon wheels
where minnows nibble on my toes in icy water
and the big one is alternately caught or spits the hook
vegetables from blackest black Earth
bathed in love and grown in Northern sunshine feed me
immersion happens here
true baptism
where I become one with the element of water
de-evolve into two dimensional chemical stick structures
lapping at the sand like sea foam