_85. The Poet Dreaming

So many poems about water,
light, love–
so why do they all abandon you
when you wake in the midst of
an anxious dream?
The cool certainty of realism
but no arias,
sonnets, or great, formal oceans
of metaphor[1]
interrupt the night.

At least the grounds
are familiar ones,
a bed is a bed,
you needn’t care where
or even its exact dimensions.
The rose is night[2],
terrors and projections
and the shivering
nightmare,
waking to find
the world changed.[3]

It is and is not
we witness many realities
at once and are frightened
but the dream is
what we are become,
and gladly!
It replaces the dull earth
with mysteries;
it staves off our certain death.

[1] Cf. Maxine Kumin, “The Excrement Poem”
[2] Cf. Li-Young Lee, “Rose”
[3] Cf. UKLG, “The Lathe of Heaven”