The Doctors Call It An Irritation

but how to tell you this? sometimes

I am beside myself – no, I mean

my self is beside my self

 

sometimes when I am here

beside you I am at sunset on sand

or a hut balanced in a beech tree

where you have always been

and never will be and I've been

many times before and never

 

I am the rails on a trestle, forever

traveling in the same direction

forever never intersecting

suspended in evening air

 

sometimes I see myself floating

on a blue lake, catching rainbow trout

with my hands, next to a highway

 

where I drive two lanes at once

two lanes overlapping, my eyes

crossing the median, seeing it twice

together and never intersecting

 

the doctors call it an irritation

a burst of lightning, crossed

wires in my brain where my self

intertangles with myself

 

an irritation, they say, take these

and you will be safe and safe

to others, no crossed wires

or eyes or medians, no more

balancing on trestles

 

now the train rolls into the station

reliably on time but my return

ticket to the blue lake lies

in tatters on the rails