#keith-lyndaker — Public Fediverse posts

Sand Castle

Damned be anything 
that rises up out of this sand,
where the sea licks and leaves its froth,
the waves like fingers in their ceaseless clawing,
betrayed by the white whisper of the surf,
that eternal purging to loosen 
the smallest grains in relentless toil,
until all the walls crumble and the tower sways,
then falls like a slithering serpent that slides
wounded and torn beneath the emerald sea.

October 26, 1988
Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica

Part of the continuing Respectful American series, a selection of writings from my travel journals from Central America in 1988

in landscapes unfamiliar

In landscapes unfamiliar,
when the destination shines in the distance,
the path does not always reveal itself.

There may be no signpost,
no worn road beneath the feet,
only hills rolling into shadow,
fields bending under strange winds,
and the far glimmer of something hoped for
calling from beyond the unknown.

But if one keeps walking,
if one remains on the journey,
step after uncertain step,
with dust on the shoes
and questions in the heart,

the way appears.

Not all at once,
not as a map unfolded in the hand,
but as a clearing between trees,
a break in the stone,
a small light on the water.

And at last
the fisherman reaches the lake,
stands quietly at the edge
of all he had been seeking,

and makes his first cast.

July 11, 2015 (expanded June 2026)

Bowed Heads

Lately I've been seeing 
a lot of people with their heads 
bent over as if in prayer.

I am heartened to see 
so many engaged in the art 
of meditation or contemplation. 

Whether waiting for 
a meeting to begin 
or for someone to arrive 
or perhaps simply to kill time, 
the hands clasp 
and the head bows.

Then I draw closer 
and I see that the head 
is bent over a screen. 

An ethereal light bathes 
the worshipper's face, 
eyes enraptured, 
captured in a blue glow.

And I can't help 
but wonder if this 
is the new God.

July 11, 2013

The Places in My Dreams

The world within, the world of my dreams, is similar to the one I walk through every day. But it is different.

The streets bend strangely. The rooms open where they should not. The people and places are often indifferent to me, and sometimes, they are even antagonistic.

They are not merely people and places. They are representations of emotions I have not yet worked through from the previous day. Sixteen waking hours are not enough to fully grasp all that I have experienced, endured, feared, desired, regretted, or misunderstood.

And so, in the night, these things come alive.

They take on faces. They become houses, roads, crowds, locked doors, ruined landscapes, familiar rooms made unfamiliar. They guide me through the shadow lands—not always kindly, but truthfully. They show me what I could not see while awake.

My dreams are not escapes from the day.

They are the day returning in another form, asking to be understood.

Some nights I find myself back in places I have never been, and yet they feel older than memory. A school that was never my school. A church with hallways that keep multiplying. A childhood home rearranged by grief. A city I know by instinct, though no map has ever held it.

In these places, I am often trying to get somewhere.

I am late. I am lost. I am looking for someone. I am trying to explain myself to people who will not listen. I am searching for a room, a door, a vehicle, a path, a way home. Sometimes I am carrying something fragile. Sometimes I have forgotten what I was supposed to carry. Sometimes I am responsible for a task I do not understand, surrounded by people who seem to know the rules but refuse to tell me.

This is the cruelty of the dream world: everyone else seems initiated.

They move through the strange landscape as if it is ordinary. They know which hallway leads out, which road is safe, which bus to board, which door not to open. I am the stranger in a world that somehow belongs to me. I am the dreamer, and yet I am not in control.

Perhaps this is why the places feel antagonistic. They do not hate me. They are simply unwilling to flatter me. They will not pretend I am finished with what I have not faced. They will not comfort me with easy explanations. They turn my emotions into architecture and ask me to walk through them.

Fear becomes a narrow bridge.

Regret becomes a house with too many locked rooms.

Anger becomes a storm on the edge of town.

Shame becomes a crowd that sees me before I am ready to be seen.

Grief becomes a road that always returns to the same place.

And longing—longing becomes a light in a window I can never quite reach.

I wake from these dreams with the feeling that I have traveled farther than my body could have gone. I have crossed cities, fields, stairways, basements, sanctuaries, ruins, and train stations. I have spoken with the dead and avoided the living. I have been judged by strangers and ignored by friends. I have wandered through the unfinished weather of my own soul.

Then morning comes, and the ordinary world returns.

The walls are where I left them. The floor is solid. The dog needs to go out. The coffee waits. The phone glows with its small demands. The day begins again, pretending to be separate from the night.

But I know better.

The dream has left its residue. A feeling follows me, sometimes faint, sometimes heavy. A hallway from the dream lingers inside the hallway of the house. A face from the night appears behind the face of someone I know. A mood clings to the morning like fog.

The shadow lands do not vanish when I wake.

They retreat.

They wait beneath the visible world, beneath errands and conversations, beneath sermons and chores, beneath the version of myself that knows how to answer when someone asks, “How are you?”

I say, “I’m fine.”

But somewhere beneath that answer, an entire city is still burning, or flooding, or rebuilding itself in the dark.