To have the sky on speed dial

To dream.
To have the sky on speed dial: 
please more stars, less rain; 
please more wildfowl in a skein, 
less death please, less disarray. 

To dream. 
To text one river and get a thousand replies: 
there, from the mountain, rushing white, 
there in the throat of the sea, salted like blood, 
there, sloshing against temple steps, marigolds and prayers circling with the fish, 
there, around her delicate feet, like a soft cloud fallen, in a hurry to get back home.

To dream. 
To DM time, to slow the dawn,
to hasten yesterday, 
to swirl into a lost moment, 
to gather minutes from different hours like logs for a pyre: 
to know the duality of so much silence.

My dreams are darkening light, forcing forward the moon. 
When morning comes, they will sit like ancestor crows
on the fence, cawing for ritual oblations.

But what is the coefficient of sleep? 
What is another word for real? 
At what point does the dreamer leave? 
What is the flight path of the dream? 

Picture this: a solitary bird, fleeing its
virgin winter, beak-first into a fog, 
still knowing, still mapping, still dreaming the way.

#Poetry

From Aug 2024