Lucid Dreaming

Empty is only the warp of our tapestry,
part of our pattern, is only the interval,
only the silence that shapes our pale music
only remembered when drifting from dreams
in that sleep-darkened tent
where our souls slake their thirst
for the new, for the novel,for nothing…
…. And then we are there…

There where the stone still rolls
down the thousand-year cliff,
to the doorsteps of dream, to the red heat of the Serengeti,
of the search for safe shelter, of the consuming of carrion,
of the side-spotted flicker in the grass that cannot be the wind,
of the million-year march from hand ax to atom.

Yet if dreams hold an answer, as flowers hold fog,
they must answer with breath, and, if they answer,
must move among stars, and have their own songs
of the body and blood, and must sing them.

The eye’s iris closing in the brightening light…
The body, vanishing in the brightening light…
The mind …
… an old man running along a beach of blue sand
               with a young girl riding high on his shoulders …
                    dissolves into a memory.

The lips —
          pale, their smile evaporating
               in the hot sanded winds —
                    dissolve into a line,
     And the eyes —
          gazing into the spaces between stars —
               grow dim and close on the dark.

     Grow dim and sleep.
     Grow dim and sleep

     sleep long through the dark density beyond death,  sleep cupped in the palms of the far stars
where fresh sunlight falls like feathers through bones,
where lost constellations have no shapes and no names,
where parts of our pattern are forgotten mandalas,
while on earth we stand stranded between sun and stars,
drowned deep in that sleep that only the rain
falling softly, softly falling,  on the fresh leaves will lend us.

Stars fading.
     Sun rising.

          Windy city.

               Morning occurs

forever
               as love occurs

forever.

We…
We are all awake now.
     Sunlight falls
          on all our faces gathered
               on a shore with no name,
                    blue sands by the crimson sea.

Stars above us dwindle
     towards the outside edge of light,
          and whirling shake their hair,
(Ah, jet ebony!)
                 in a free wind blowing
East and west,
     wet and warm,
           now and forever,
              “hello, good-bye, I’ll always love you.”

We hold each other here in the place of solitude and stillest night.
There are others with us. We have met them in another Time.

Love,
     for the moon is rising.
Love,
     for the sun delays.