
Riverside View Park
By Todd Matson
My 5-year-old toes
on the precipice of a cliff
dropping straight down a football
field into the churning river below. I saw it
at Riverview Park with my own 5-year-old eyes – my
toes on the edge of an abyss, the swirling river below. I was
there, yearned to return to that place for years, for the déjà vu of it
all, to experience another moment of living on the edge, another adrenaline
rush, until the concrete thinking of childhood began to give way to the capacity for
abstract thought of adolescence. Make no mistake, I was there, my parents and two older
sisters were my witnesses as they stood in a line perpendicular to me, as I took one
step at a time forward only to look back and see them all frozen at attention, no
one breaking formation, no one saying a word, just watching and waiting for
me to reach the edge. Just watching and waiting as my toes reached the
precipice. Damn the capacity for abstract thinking. Damn the power
of deductive reasoning. How could I have been somewhere that
doesn’t exist, that never existed? My dear parents and sisters
would never have just stood there, rank and file, like toy
soldiers, motionless and speechless as I stepped right
up to the razor’s edge. So, could it be that lucid
dreams can open portals to parallel universes,
where dreams are spiked with dopamine
to make our dreamscapes fuel our
imaginations for everything
our landscapes can be
when we believe
in our dreams?

Todd Matson is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in North Carolina, United States. His poetry has been published in The Journal of Pastoral Care and Counseling, Salvation South, Soul-Lit, The Clayjar Review, Agape Review, Redrosethorns, San Antonio Review, The Brussels Review, The Shallot, WestWard Quarterly and Mobius: The Journal of Social Change; and his short stories have been published in Ariel Chart International Literary Journal; Faith, Hope and Fiction; Agape Review and The Piker Press. He has also written lyrics for songs recorded by several contemporary Christian music artists, including Brent Lamb, Connie Scott and The Gaither Vocal Band.