Reject and escapee of society, the poet maintained his sweet intercourse with the night, lover of her empty and abandoned embraces caught on the sly in shadows, around corners and in all the brightly hidden places of the mind.  There he kissed the dreams of all (wo)mankind and announced their most frightful nightmares, these anxieties and apprehensions finely tuned to lines of verse.  Apparitions greeted the weary lover from the strongly rushing stream of night, sweeping him on through their conclusion.  The poet was privileged to step behind the scenes, where life is given its freest meaning and all the secrets of existence are transcribed, mystifyingly encoded.  Tonight he would be reunited with the darkness around corners, crossing into the land of dreams.

 Here he walked through the cooling heat of summer, among the homes and buildings of town, seeking where that darkest shadow might be hid this night.  There to plunge through the churning currents of the shore-caste waves, seeking the more steady and tranquil depths beyond.  And he is riding...

 Riding on a bicycle, away from the farm of his parents, out and up along the spine of a wooded ridge thick with green.  He had returned from a life, but found at the farm--science, father of our culture--only a waiting station from which he must once again depart.

Pedaling across the countryside, the road ahead was transformed from a rural lane to a major thoroughfare.  And there, at the crossroads, on a balding sore rise of earth lay
the infernal factory--like a large tick with its head buried deep within the ground.  The blood on which this tick engorged was thick and dark, the waste it generated was toxic and putrid.  And there were the fangs through which it injected its venom into the earth.  As this plume of venom spread through the ground, he could follow its progress by a subtle change in the surface, which appeared much the same as it did before infection, but where every plant and grain of sand carried within it the visage of death, soon to be released.

 As all roads led to this charnel house, the poet swerved to avoid the gaping maw of the beast, swerved onto a narrow trail through the fields, skirting the edge of the poisonous plume.  The trail took him along productive farmland, where the roots of
desirable vegetables were now being licked by the evil that man had produced.  Farmers were busy harvesting the bounty, never guessing that every grain and vegetable bore the kiss of death for them and others.

A residential neighborhood bordered the farmland, each house fenced off from the cropland but not from the under-riding pestilence.  The poet searched for some passage through the fencing, so that he might escape the aching grasp of death which spread through the land.  Through this dying landscape the poet was joined by a dog which ran along beside the bike with its tongue lolling out.  Brimming with vitality and vigor, the dog attached itself to the poet, seeking his expression for its life.

Finally there appeared a gate in the fence, leading into the yard of a large old house.  the rider let himself and the dog through the gate, careful to latch it behind them, intending to quickly cross this yard and disappear down the road.  A young woman carrying a baby looked out at him through a window, motionless and half alive; yet in her eyes the poet saw love and desire, birth and growth--all the bitter harmony of life--there buried deep within and waiting to be released.

 Up on the front porch, the door opened and the dog left the poet to race into the house, carrying its spark within.  The house sprang to life; out of the door and across the porch rushed children who surrounded the poet, playing with his bicycle, swinging from his arms and clinging to his legs.  Close behind them was an older woman who cared for them all, and behind her the demure young woman carrying the baby.  And this was how the poet found a home and a cause, here on the edge of a spreading plume of corruption and evil.