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Le Sacré Rêve

This is a rêve.
Not a dream – for I would not want
To mingle it with those bright plastic shapes of a televised Olympics.
Not this brainchild,
This new yoga innovation to a modern world—"close your eyes to see"
Chant with me; forget the words on the tip of your tongue
(Ancient wisdom)

But even so I promised (to whom?) long ago to
Look and now I see –
A man walks down my lonely Paris street (my street, my loneliness) untouched
By the rain that stains his shirt collar and mats the little fine hairs on the back of his neck.

This is a rêve—
(Mine)
A civilization without shapes but haunted by silhouettes
Funny that cold cobblestones should pave my warm reveries
This place of echoes where I say nothing and your silence says
Everything.

I watch a shapeless woman sitting upon a bus stop bench swaddling her baby
With blankets too soft
For anything but his subconscious to remember.
(Enveloped)

Trance-like, I seek out these shapes lost in daylight and moon-shadows
(Subterfuge)
And when the Big-O Tires sign comes into view
I am reminded of that slow and steady leak, old tires, new inventions
(Advertisement art)

My pen ceases to scratch paper and I put my hand up to my forehead
Where have you gone now Monsieur Chagall – (I cannot wait)
I wear time like a sweater
Whose unraveling thread I cannot help but pick at.

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