Dreams Through Winter

Dreams Through Winter

In this dream

all the ice cream’s melted

We fill paper cups and sip

The air’s sludge

and tires stick to the pavement

a stretched black goo with every roll

Clouds fold onto the shore

and trees bare naked

a bucolic rage

A wail from the sky

I listen:

You wanted this.

There’s a white clash

that sounds like Help me!

and I’m baptized in light

feel a river wash through me

a filling cold then nothing.

In this dream

I wake up glass

Empty vessel

I chip my heel down the hall

try to speak and my teeth

shatter against my tongue

I watch bits rattle down knees

grab the vase of flowers – dying

but newly so the color’s still vibrant

and shove them down my throat

watch them color the space

my heart should be

I fill myself with lotus

and sea and fringe

the intestines with feather.

In this dream

I’m alone in the woods

A crow stands

a figurehead at the edge

of a limb

I give him a message

on his black paper wing

Give this to the wind.

and the crow takes off

with one feather plucked

for my taking and I’m lifted

out into the clear blue!

I’m free I’m free I’m free!

The fisherman below

shields his eyes from me

this chipped glass boy

with feather and petal and ocean

and where the sun touches

a thousand rainbows cast out

Up here

I find the howler

in her clouded tomb

I sit with Her

watch the earth turn

in silent perpetuity

She holds my pointed chin

To look at art is to grow sad.

She pinches the feather

out between my eyes and I fall

into forging whispers

To be art is more fulfilling.

In this dream

everything is laden with stars

On the tree bark

deer rub their bodies

and the stars dim to oil slicks

I can almost touch the sky

My hands – my hands!

reach for a rabbit skull

its shine rubbed onto my arms

against my chest

the galactic muck spread

onto my brows, ears, the soles

the soul.

I color my teeth in rainbows

beam into the sky and wait

for the black velvet hand

to reach down and pin me

with the angels.