i woke up at 3am this morning,
not for any reason,
not because i wanted to,
but when i tried to go back to sleep,
the crows started barking,
and my cat started chirping,
and a neighbor’s dog started mooing,
so i thought, well, maybe i didn’t really
wake up at all,
but damn does it feel like it later in the day
i keep thinking it’s tomorrow
when it’s today,
and i keep wanting to sleep in
when i need to be on the way,
but perhaps i will be right,
you know,
one of these days,
though perhaps that’s something to be afraid of,
since the burden of being right
means only one thing,
whereas being wrong can mean so many different ways
of looking at the world
i drove past a methodist church
the other day,
and their sign said that ‘inflation had not changed
the price of salvation’,
though when i went to church as a kid,
no one ever really clarified that there was
a price to be paid at all
Fred Aiken Writing 