On the Eastern seaboard,
it’s just as hard to wake from
another dream where you’re drowning
as it is on the West Coast.

Some time, perhaps mid-October,
I swallowed a handful of some
unmarked happy hollow
in a bottle with a child-safety cap
I struggled to negotiate.

I crawled out of my window
to be under the canopy
of the Midwestern sun
to feel the blissful peace of some form of oblivion;

and when I didn’t wake,
when I was devoured by grave worms,
I fed the roots that bore a beautiful dogwood
which blossomed in the springtime.