dreams Archives

without the use of now

after an unlived hour

She lived in the hour. He kept it for later.

The body learns. At first by leaning—tentative, offering its small faith in the moment, then less so.

The mouth that hungers for bread learns the shape of waiting. How to soften the edge of asking. What it means to accept how he forgot—not by cruelty, but by being nowhere at all when it mattered.

When it mattered: paper towels, toilet paper, the coffee gone. The latch he knew needed fixing, leaving someone to know they were still at risk while he knew it, did nothing. This is how absence accumulates: a field of what must be thought of by someone.

He is many things, most of them possible. In the end, he is not that someone. Not careless—that would imply contact. Something else. Drawn again into the bright perimeter of what might be.

No idea so good as the next idea. No plan like the one untried. No life like the one he has yet to begin—this one, finally, worthy of him.

Meanwhile, she begins to sort what can be carried; what must be thrown away; what cannot be asked for again. The body keeps score even when the mind refuses.

At the water, he is something else again. Watch how he rides the wave cleanly, beautiful in it, held by the same force that could take a life. He does not look back—not by choice, but because the frame does not include it.

Behind him, outside the shot, someone learns the cost of air.

Later, he will say it was a good day and mean it. Tomorrow, he announces, will come. The other day he speaks of is always the one that has the best of him.

Never this one. Never the hour that asks to be met.

Here, he is a maker of atmosphere. A summoner of possibility. He can speak a future into near belief. Who would not follow that voice. Who would not, once or twice, be pulled back into its hold.

He kept himself intact for a future unveiling. Called this becoming.

She lived among the opened things: torn roll, empty shelf, the latch that would not catch. Her body learned how not to lean.

He did not think himself absent. Where he lived, the hours gathered for his arrival. Nothing began until he did.

Her questions thinned, then fell away. In their place: the work. The hour, arriving whether held or not, asked to be lived by someone.

Years passed. From time to time, he spoke again of beginning.

She, already inside the life of daily flesh, did not answer.

grounds

for negotiation

& we
painted fractals on cardboard
for flying us home, I’m gone
we’d say, like this place was never it
like a comment on the weather
we were

Immortal City

Turning wheel

I swear it was an angel, said the captive near the end
who said that she said to him, this:

Are you thirsty, stranger? Has the road been long?
Come closer. Let me whisper of what is just beyond that bend.

They say there is a city of immortals somewhere, in celebration.
Who tells. Whose memory obeys command to speak.

What river, what other do you seek. All novelty, all knowledge, all oblivion.
Whose end, whose world. What immortality, and when.

Who is fluent in the customs of that place.
Who deserts before the spoiling.

Whose mother, what monsters, whose lips at that breast.
Who dazzled in what rays of that sun, when first.

Who from those shallow graves emerges to slake what thirst.
Whose prayer. What ear and when.

What ladder, whose wall, to what courtyard.
When joy, whose patience at the gates.

Where is the river that gives immortality and whose blood is in it,
and where is the empty canal that takes it away.

Whose will on what horse.
What labyrinth. Whose center. What well.

Spider Dreams

And the rest of us, watching.

The jumping spiders are dreaming. You can tell because the babies have translucent skin. Watch the eyes behind it, back and forth. Notice the twitching legs.

What are they doing? One of us asks. The theory is that they are trying to make sense. Whatever they dream about, it may help them jump better when they wake. It may help with direction, takeoffs, landings. Which, we have to admit, is more than any of us can say about our spider dreams.

The birds are doing it, too, another observes. Watch the feathers, how they twitch on drooping heads. The sleeping cephalopods turn wild colors, sending signals with urgency.

What we are wondering seems uncouth to ask. But chances are that there is one in any given assembly who is relatively immune to propriety, so we wait for the silence to break.

Do you think they see us? Says the one, When they . . .?

No answer is forthcoming. In the next hush, we notice that it isn’t clear which answer we want. In the long quiet that follows, we sleep.

***

Inspired by Carolyn Wilke’s recent Knowable article on emerging research into the REM sleep patterns of various creatures.

Updraft

Passenger notes at dawn.

An atmospheric river pours dreams through the night, drenching our words and pooling at our feet. One takes us in its boat, drops us, picks us up again, evades us in its thrall and escapes upon waking. We spend so much of each ride asking how it will end, and will it? And what if it won’t? Until we end up beginning again.

When the end escapes us, where are we? Climbing through spirals of remembrance, children at a playground, one and another occasionally stuck, fallen, left out, carried away. The arrangement shifts constantly, like mountain weather.

From here, we cut swaths of sky for new wings. Once lifted, we rain intentions into our shadows, raising the tides against the impact of the next one to drop from these clouds.

Under Scrutiny

When chimera feathers fall.

Guards at the gate confiscating dreams demand our reasons for wrapping them to chests. Why this one? And this? But messengers, like so many winged creatures, are stunted in captivity, and we watched the feathers fall. With those forevers beyond language, how much of our time? Now muted by motion and moved, the assembly of permanent particles dispersed again.