AS A BLOW, FROM THE WEST
Names for the moon:
Harvest; and Blue; and
Donât Touch Meâ
and Do. I dreamed I had
made a home on the side
of a vast, live volcano,
that the rest was water,
that I was one among many of
no distinction: we but
lived there, like so many
birds that, given the chance
not to fly for once in
formation, wonât take it, or
cannot, orâorâbut
what of choice can a bird know?
Down the volcanoâs sides,
in the pose of avalanche
except frozen, and so
densely it seemed impossible
they should not strangle
one anotherâyet they
did notâgrew all
the flowers whose names
Iâd meant to master;
it was swift, the dreamâso
much, still, to catch
up toâthough I could not
have known that, of course,
then: isnât it only in
the bracing and first wake of
loss that we guess most cleanly
the speed with which what held us
left us? In the dream, the world
was birdless, lit, yielding, it
seemed safe, which is not to say
you werenât in it. You were, but
changed somewhat, not so much
a man of few words,
more the look of one who
âhaving entered willfully
some danger, having just returned
from itâchooses instead
of words his body as
the canvas across which to
wordlessly broadcast his coming
through. We lived
in a manner thatâif it
didnât suggest an obliviousness
to a very real and always-there
dangerâI would call heady;
it was not that. Think,
rather, of the gods: how,
if they do in fact know
everything, they must understand
also they will be eventually
overthrown by a new order,
which is at worst a loss
of power, but not of life,
as the gods know it. I was
not, that is, without
ambition: the illicit, in
particular, I would make it
my business to have studied;
and of that which is gained
easily, to want none
of it. Flowers; names
for the moon. It was
swift, the dream, the body
a wordless and stalled
avalanche that, since forgivableâ
if I couldâI would forgive, poor
live but flagging, dying now
volcano. And the water
around its sides receding with
a dreamâs swiftness: everywhere,
soon, sand and sand, a desert that,
because there was no water,
and because they missed it,
the natives had called a sea, and
to the sea had given a name:
Friendship, whose literal
translation in the country of
dream is roughly âthat which
all love evolves
down toââ
Until to leave, or
try toâand have drowned
tryingâbecomes refrain,
the one answer each time
to whatever question:
what was the place called?
what was the house like?
what was it we did inside it?
how is it possible that it cannot be enough to have given
up to you now the dream asâfor a time, rememberâI did give
my truest self? why wonât you take itâif a gift, if yours?
THE CLEARING
Had the light
changed, possiblyâor,
differently, was that how Iâd
seen it
             always, and not
looking? Was I meant for
a vessel? Did I only
believe so and,
so, for a time, was it true but
only in that space which belief makes
for its own wanting?
What am I going to
do with you
                     âWho just
said that?
Whose the bodyâwhereâthat voice
belongs to?
                   Might I turn,
toward it, whinny
into it?
             My life
             a water,
             or a cure for
             that which no water
             can cure?
             His chest
             a forest, or a