By Tim
Bellows
One dark tree stands in the
damp lawn. A steel fence
knifes along the center
property line. Grasses
landscaped level. South of
the fence, I’m
down in my bed. A final son,
I look out Father’s high
windows as night
flourishes up from the
particle, the moment
where sleep, rain and dream
settle in expert landings.
The agile blackness
snaps open and sleep
flows into the formal room
back in my eye.
Beyond that I meet the
instant where rain
hits the leaves and
atmospheres hanging over all our lawns,
and I’m some sleep-eyed,
natural animal. The neighborhood
nudges me, pulls the covers
down and I’m just feather,
cuticle, skin that seems to
float. The lawn
sprouts to forest as
instantaneous centuries pass me by.
I have no wives, no lovers.
I only agree
with my dreamed movies that
wake me and we prowl
through branches and hanging
moss. Then the old trunks
send leaves up to enwrap
silence and reach
clear through the city’s
humming in the sky. If that sound
can in turn stroke the
purring in the air,
coax out the thin bird call
inside every green thing
then the weight of night can
bury us and it
will not matter – you and
I can be cabinets of silence,
the wood so dry we sneeze
and the whole of music
is released from the wood.
So many surprises. Now
for the day sky – the
sound of silvery deceptions and
shabby gods held in midair.
I wish they could walk us
clear back into the
waterwheel of sleep where ravishing souls
assemble to study the Atman’s
own records, to learn –
trimmed out in white shirts
and pants –
to question nothing at last.
At last
to make no point. Only to
touch
the green-dark song of true
reverie,
the living rain, the damp
and opening trees.
Afterword: The poem was
written in Reno, in my studio apartment, second floor.
At night, I'd chant and
later fall asleep, drawing closer to the divine, the ultimate.
Daylight and logic are quite limited; night and dream are more
magical, fluid, and eternal to me. The last four lines in the
poem show a state where we give up having hard opinions of
good/bad or right/wrong. Soul, the real self, is free of those
compartments.
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