Between

Whipping crowds
up to a froth
he steadfastly remained
himself

and – while they jumped up screaming,
every last scintilla of them roaring forth –
returned his infinite availability
to its dark shelf.

When he awoke from dreaming
which according to his watch
had gone on
nearly seven hours

he was astonished he no longer
had his powers –
or if he did,
they had remanded him

to ignorance of how to re-ignite them:
or, perhaps,
the lesson learned
was simply this:

he was Magellan,
Judy Garland, Harry Potter,
and Apollo in his chromosomes
and merely human

in the petri dish of wakeful
incarnation now.
Somewhere within, however,
he knew how

to smash it all to every smithereen.
What he hadn’t got
the hang of yet?
Between.


.