I close my eyes and enter the dream
of us, millet-bellied and soft,
tracing the walls for new texture, bloomed gelatin,
stale rye or a fresh tear to unchap my lip
I consider your veins as portals and thank the other side
of you who has dropped sunflower and sesame
down the throat of singing feathers, somewhere knowing
the way birds make me grin and that it is important
to cherish the dream: a boy and his rock collection
a girl who finds God in a flicker wing
in the dream we half a red cabbage
and see a lady in ceremony with arms to the sky
that is me you say and empty the trash
full of crumpled swans and hair
you trace my jaw like the perimeter of a rose
and again I am beautiful, in the dream
we compare maps and collide at distant ocean hums,
Donald Byrd, close encounters with deer, broccoli stems--
tired from the journey we dislodge hands from the clock
and plop in the center, lain against me much like a child,
I feel your heart in your neck, knocking to be kissed
now I bend to you, lit
by the flame which effaces every memory
every candle heretofore will tell me
of our precious wax--
promised in my lap,
the weight of your head
soft
like a bowl of feathers
or the basal bond between
tear and cheek
and I swear baby
it is everything.