Dream Dust

Individuals
With detailed bedside journals
Recollecting dreams

Interpret those dreams
As a kind of poetry
Crossed with cryptic code.

I don’t. I can’t see
The value of dreams except
I’m told I have to

Experience them—
Their nightly insanity
And inanity—

For me to stay sane,
Which seems like the kind of myth
Ancient Greeks might like.

On the other hand,
Given that dreams weave in scraps
Of the most banal

And quotidian
Elements of waking life,
And given I write,

It’s not surprising
I do sometimes dream of poems,
At least a few lines.

Just the other night,
In the midst of more nonsense
And the cruelty

That only makes sense
If dreams intend parody
Of the dream of life,

I saw the last page
Of a collection of poems,
Black on cream paper,

And thought to myself
That its small poem was my last
I would ever write.

I only had time
To glimpse the first and last lines
And to get a sense

Of something formal—
“Child’s obscure exuberance”—
“A pocket of dust.”

The rest of the night,
I fought to carry those words
Past my other dreams.

I woke triumphant—
Child’s obscure exuberance!
A pocket of dust.