Mindbreak

            When I swim in the ocean
I make sure to forget the blue whales
If I don’t
I’ll surely sink, stupefied.
I cannot believe it
cannot fathom
the giants that billow and heave below.
So I float on the surface
and forget the blue whales.

Whales are like dreams:
An important justification
for the memories we lose every morning
is that dreams are too boundless,
too impossible.
A reasonable mind could never stretch that far
when the sun rises.

A forgotten dream is a small price to pay
for certain sanity.

My grandfather tells a story
of being swallowed by a giant fish.
He orates and soliloquizes and
prophesizes
about the time he prayed for release
from deep within that great pink cavern
while slimy whale spit
oozed down the walls like the dripping thaw
of an ancient glacier.
He tells of the time he prayed in the dark
reconciling his reality,
and his disbelief,
only because he could not escape it.

            But for me
understanding what my grandfather felt

would be like holding onto dreams
or witnessing blue whales:

                              too unimaginable to remember.


2017, revised 2023