If a Person Visits Someone in a Dream, in Some Cultures the Dreamer Thanks Them

in memory of Reginald Shepherd

Dear Reginald,

It is morning.

I sit at a table

writing a letter

with a needle and thread.

I pricked my finger          A pelican

out of her migratory path,

even her language family—

whose child is gone

yet she absently pecks at her breast.

I write on the bedspread

I am making for you there

May you breathe deeply and easily.

If a person visits someone in a dream,

in some cultures the dreamer thanks them in the morning

for visiting their dream.

I call it dream

not that I am drawn to that which withdraws

but to him pearled, asleep, who never withdraws.

At a hotel in another star. The rooms were cold and

damp, we were both at the desk at midnight asking if

they had any heaters. They had one heater. You are

ill, please you take it. Thank you for visiting my dream.

Can you breathe all right?

Break the glass

shout

break the glass

force the room

break the thread

Open

the music behind the glass.

Remember that blue vine?      Grown

alongside the gate

fourteenth century

Venus close as the moon

the bowl of the skull    turning here

lifting that

I dropped a plate

I dropped a plate and broke it

it came from a set

I keep the scraped-down leak marks from the rain

on the wall from two years ago

layers blue and tan

Page 7

Page 8

The broken, the underneath,

the backwards:

On the radio, Merce said, Do it backwards,

Jump first, then run,

even if it was just with his arms, when he got old,

even if some people hated it

Desert Prison

If every present is possible,

how can we have eyes to see?

The teacher and I, the guest, both free, class over,

just walking down the corridor, out to the gate

The teacher and I, looking wildly

how to mend

the man’s head that the other man had stabbed—

Where to wash

your head           that they had stabbed

You kneeling, by the door,

trying to get out of the corridor —

You ask,

Could we have coffee?             —No, my truth,

I’m still on this side.

I saw you last night, again,

at the bar on 57th,

O faceless dancer,

and I put down my mask

I wanted you to touch me

You stood there neither man nor woman,

beautiful edge           by the water

The Young Mother

Milk called out of the breast

to the just-born mouth

Inside the earth

earth came

All membrane

no sound

—orgasm—god—

be my unshareable secret?     unreceived?

I’m sad, Warden

Are you sad

All you people looking out from the stern

of the white ship Withholding

—I’ll take my babies

and swim

I thought It’s time

I thought It’s time to go into the forest with a bowl.

Maya said, It’s all one thing,

student, householder, forest.