The Daydream

In a classroom, the professor’s voice becomes background interference. My mind is somewhere on the landscape, far off in the Great Basin of Nevada. Those big cities become ghost towns. Wind and dust pass through the shattered windows of empty skyscrapers. There’s no electricity anywhere, except for one buzzing radio sucking on its last drop of current.

The storm grows enormous, sweeping across the landscape, causing everything to disappear. I’m dreaming of the deepness of rivers, and skeletons moving through the darkness of night. Sand is blowing from the dunes in summer. The Ocean’s flooding the coastlines. Hurricanes and tornadoes are on the rise. Earthquakes and volcanoes erupt. Hateful wars are waged. Desperate terrorists strike. International killing becomes so common place.

In the classroom, a talking professor is irrelevant. The class debates the social issues. The clock ticks onward. America keeps exploiting. The storm is building. The poor want a rebellion. Islamic militants are strapping bombs to themselves, blowing innocents apart. We cannot judge these things in black and white. Maybe it is natural for human beings to create murderous holocausts. Americans drop bombs from the sky, landing on villages, killing indiscriminately. For me, the line of terrorism is blurred. Politicians keep spewing misinformation. They say Americans have the best politicians money can buy. I’m trying to understand those that resist the system, to survive. I understand the wolf trapped in the cage.

The professor lectures, behind thick glasses. When the time?s up, I leave campus and head home, feeling agitated. Before I know it, I?m going down the highway, crowded with diesels and impatient motorists. Then, I?m driving passed ranches and alfalfa fields, down a frontage road to the edge of the wilderness. After turning the vehicle off, I spend hours in silence, dreaming of the Juniper covered hills.. The owl hoots, the junipers creak, the meadowlark whistles. The Earth’s power is revolutionary.

When will the machine sputter? I’m waiting for the lights to fade…