it's about three months after abilene texas...betty and i are asleep in our rye, new york bedroom and i have this dream...  

I'm on a tricycle.  I'm full-grown 6'4" but the tricycle seems not all that small for me.  I'm pedalling.  The front wheel squeaks a little and one of the rear wheels may have a wobble.  It's alright, though...in fact, I'm doing pretty good.  I get some great speeds out of this tricycle.  

I'm on this oval track.  Just me and my tricycle.  I build up some speed on a straightaway, around a curve at the end, up a little jump ramp and woo...over a gap that took me by surprise.  Not too wide, but wide enough that the wheels actually left the ground.  Around the track I go again.  Down the straightaway, around the end curve and up...and over the gap.  The gap is about six feet wide but no problem for me and my trusty tricycle.  If I go fast enough, I actually sail over the gap.    Hey this is fun!  I've really got the feel of the track now.  

I've made five or six circuits when I notice a big crowd of twenty or thirty thousand people about 500 yards away and what is it they are doing?  I slow down.  I pedal a little further along the straightaway.  I'm curious, I stop and watch for a while.  No real significance here.

 "Oh well " I think, "back to the track!"  I begin pedalling once more.  It dawns on me now as I approach the ramp once again that I don't have nearly enough speed to clear the gap.  I should have been pedalling harder, faster, I should have started earlier.  I shouldn't have stopped, I...I'm up the ramp.    I will not make the other side.

 I'm falling.  Me and the tricycle.  Down into the gap.  The walls fly by me.  "I'll be smashed" I realize, "the tricycle will hit the rocks and the metal will drive up into my body and I'll be killed!"

 I've got to extricate myself from this tricycle.  Now I'm trying to climb clear while falling at some incredible speed between two sheer cliffs to a rocky bottom which rushes closer and...

 "Wait a minute! Aren't I a child of God? Of course," I realize.  "Then Lord, take me now..."

 Poof!

 I am a shaft of sunlight; specks of dust drift suspended through my beam.  The base of me rests on the rocks below; my head reaches the sun.  I am complete.  I am home.  I begin to laugh.  The laughter wakes me up.  My eyes open and I am smiling.  I am saying "wow".

 I am still saying wow.