2.
Skim fifty pages of a soundless
sleep; dust flies up from plucked
strings. Rumple-headed, twenty-
five years later, finding my crush
on Han Solo means I would rather
be Indiana Jones. Thinned taut,
this sky. Turns out the membrane
between here & there effervesces.
Suddenly, a plastic bay on the step.
So let me ask you how you are.
Let me listen when you answer.
3.
All we can do, bedding down in dry
leaves. In awake dreams, it’s temporal.
In asleep dreams, clannish, the night
drones on. Gravity motions: sit here.
Impossible to shake, plastic horses.
Who say we will lose our loves
drastically, and again, even while
warm in this bright-armed world.
Sleeping. Human. It makes small
difference. What more can a trumpet
shout to the scattering sky?
4.
All a breathing horse knows of reason,
accommodation and of lack would
fill a plastic horse. How is it that people
we love will not return home?
Brittle angels, the carts go less.
Dawn is the mask of a sleepy, pointed
bird. Or the mysterious and gradual
disappearance of candle from thin
wick. There are too many of us here.
Yet we land in trees and climb down.
Yet pliant, the fresher go forth.
6.
Scattered like confetti of fire: ruddy
crepe myrtle and all Éluard
said, or didn’t, about a woman
I will fall in love with. Who in time
will depart with a Polish chanteuse.
Melancholy face, bandit of the high
terracotta style. Or amethysts now
petals in our teeth. A blanket draped
over the horse’s sweated back.
Mouth, how happy in the corn-
flower nest between your legs.
7.
Bees deep drunk in paper
white & hyacinth. Waves
spilling out, pulling back. Nerve-
wracking, all this running
about with a seedling
tucked between coniferous
hands. In asleep dreams, we fly.
In our galloping dream, house-
holds absolved of their salt.
Oscillation of red barns.
Hoof-picks, ringing the bells.
10.
In the dream, I am Robert Redford
sitting in a clear-watered lake. One
horseshoe on the bottom indicates
we reign in the Age of Metals.
Regret, inverting itself. How else
goes the old verse? The ball
I throw to you is the boot you may
toss back. Over night seas,
horses reconfigure our plans.
In the field a house is constructed
to stand before another house.
