It’s as if the car Charlene has always driven,
her reliable Subaru, Honda, Volvo
has suddenly not only lost its brakes
and started careening wildly
down a California canyon road,
but also the steering is broken,
the four doors automatically locked,
the airbag detonated, white-powdering her 
and the three kids—that aren’t even hers—
screaming in the backseat
without their seat belts on—

and come to think of it,
she’s beltless too—
and here comes the S-curve and 
no guardrail, and now there’s 
black ice and a moose and maybe
a semi bearing down
and then there she is, 
suspended in mid-air,
waiting for the drop.
                        

That escaped neutrino
is zooming faster than lightspeed,
trying to make it around the universe
at least once
before Mom calls him 
in for dinner. He knows he’s reckless
at this velocity;
he’s probably vaporizing
but speed is addictive,
and he loves the solar winds,
the pull of dark matter,
how when he makes a corner
in the middle of blackness
he leaves a faint trace. 

He likes flying through things the best—
people, asteroid fields, the gasses that mass
around stars. He zips through so swiftly
they hardly notice him. He’s just an aberration
in the force field, barely felt,
and then he’s gone. 

And even if he’s the result of scientists’ miscalculations 
and a cable’s faulty connection,
he’s happy in his world,
separate from the rules that constrain,
for the rest of us, imagination.
                        

Last night I moved
into a different house,
a different self.
The last one had a view
out over a working harbor,
Seattle? Helsinki? Hong Kong?,
fishing boats chugging to their piers;
this one needs its brickwork repointed
and its wallboard repaired.
Despite the closets of family treasures—
reunion photos and feathered hats, 
a turquoise handbag with paste jewels,
glittery coats and hand-painted china—
the house might not be savable

The world lies beyond the dream, fractured
like dry wall, like old concrete,
like boats with punctures or boas molting feathers. 
In the dream, I am but a watcher,
just as in life where disease 
has slammed all doors shut,
and we wait for the alarm to wake us.