I was waiting

for something to happen

I knew something was about to

It was hanging in the air

in the room

where I'd drifted into an afternoon slumber,

listening to Terry Riley's

Persian Surgery Dervishes,

the 1971 Los Angeles take,

on a sizeable volume,

Marcel Proust's A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleur

with all its 554 pages sunk onto the heavy Indian blanket

that covered me,

my old age wandering the dim halls

of Morpheus' inward castle

when something had woken me up

with the suddenness

of a car crash on the highway in icy conditions

- and with that same suddenness I realized,

thrown onto the stage of here and now,

that it was the sudden silence

after the finish of the L.A. version of Riley's piece,

that had brought me out of my slumber,

as sure as a heavy hammer on an anvil,

leaving the Paris take of The Persian Surgery Dervishes

hanging there in the room

in a space bursting at its seams

with that fateful silence,

seconds before Riley's 1972 French Surgery moment

would detonate

all over my space and time

and my fresh wide-eyed attention!