When the dream awakens & the sleeping coma
is no longer present, the self finds an awakening –
its love revelation

When the dream awakens & the sleeping coma
is no longer present, the self finds an awakening –
its love revelation
Overnight,
new toadstools
shoulder through
sodden grass
the way sorrows
emerge,
Praise the cicadas, the hydrangeas blown
against the bathroom window; praise
the wind-chimes, the whisper-press
of pages in my hand; the poem,
however it descends.
He’d played on your baseball team one year,
showed promise you never did.
You said you’d lost touch with him
until he turned up
in your English class that fall—
a different boy—withdrawn, thin,
and silent in a room where no one else was
quiet.
I didn’t ask the caterpillar
with its antennae tangled
criss-cross in a cobweb
if it wanted to be healed,