This dream
Unafraid
Sits close to me
      on slumber's bench
Our shoulders touch
One of us ephemeral
One bound to finity
Seeking answers
      in the other

Look down
Look down
The purple crocus sings

      Here I am --

I press my hand flat
        on this blank page
And feel words pulsing
        in the paper
They cling to my fingertips
Like children looking for attention
And I know when they move
To life like seeds busting open
        to let go their eager shoots
Like newborns racing to the *****
Like currents racing into every crack
        carrying mud and milk
                and love's blue skies --

For a moment they will hold
        dominion over any prayer or soliloquy
And I can say well done before I go --

What did you see
When you looked at me
With your black eyes endlessly stern
        and full of contempt,
A gift from your father
Engraved with cheerless words
And he would light a cigarette and
        pat your head in the kitchen
                a thousand years ago --

You dove into silence, the first of many,
Staring at the stove where dinner
        burned its way into oblivion;
You swallowed the room
                All of it
And now you cannot breathe
Undress
Overthrow
Or comprehend the gestures of love --

What did you see
When you looked at me?

Her branches hung low
to the ground
They brushed the dirt
that they sat upon
How beautiful is pain
when it grows
It has a way to hang
those gentle woes.

See that tree all alone
yet so full?

Her shadows weep
in the bristles of doom
Then the sun comes to play
in the cold bushy monsoon.
As gusty sighs sway her eyes
to greet the galloping moon.

The poet dies
with every line
and is reborn in the next --
Inhaling silence
and holding it there
until an intuition
forms [itself],
A small round gift
that jumps from zero
smooth and precise
but without limit
meant to arouse
something unseen
that results in the
tumbled joy of
breath and poetry
in freefall
happily plummeting
without thought or reason
through new skies
borne of a poet's dream --