At the Gym by Tom Simmons

At the Gym

As the treadmill dowels spun 
I had a recollection of you

A dream I had last night; you were in it
It was you, but it didn’t look like you
You sported a wire-brush moustache
but it was you

I also have a dream where I’m unfixed 
down a path in the woods
This occurred to me while I was running on the treadmill too
Naturally enough
I recollected it

And it doesn’t start there, on a path
It just is there                

My slumbering-self isn’t interested in thinking, or deciding
It’s interested in doing 
Or at least patrolling a path

And that’s funny
Because all-you’re-doing when you’re dreaming 
is thinking or deciding
You’re not doing anything. 

​

Simmons is a lawyer and a tenured professor at the University of South Dakota School of Law whose scholarship and teaching focuses on trusts and estates. His poems can be found or are forthcoming in, inter alia, El Portal, Corvus Review, Nine Muses, Thirteen Myna Birds, The Showbear Family Circus, Amethyst Review, Nebo, and North Dakota Quarterly.