growing gills

After "Being a Person" by William Stafford “suddenly this dream you are having matches everyone’s dream, and the result is the world” the synchronicity, perfect beating like a heart in a box the ticking of a metronome swing, swing, tick off into the air it’s a moment you can breathe when you had been drowning before except now everyone, everyone, is drowning with you do you think I’ll grow gills, mom? learn to breathe in an unbreathable space maybe we can all grow gills at the same time and nobody would need the air we could survive, happy, with mutual understanding but the world is a single second it passed already when you read that line the space in the breath that happens before you plunge into the water again you’ve got a taste of it now, the air did it stick between your teeth like taffy? did you like the taste or did you like it better when you were suffering with them all? that combination of right place, right time when everyone is linked and a whole world is gaping in one swing of a pendulum so don’t lose it, don’t wait for the swinging to go out of sync you lose all of the wonder you missed the timeframe, the ocean’s closed the continents have formed how they have, you’re done! growing gills is only possible if we make it that way the clarity you see while dreaming of what the world can be in such a limited space of a moment's pause a warning of what we cannot waste it rises up higher than anything has ever been dissipates into the air, gone the ticking is too loud now, too intermittent its synchronicity is now unheard of - never again seen or replicated gone too fast, too soon the water is too deep to breathe in.