- 1.
- in this and in other dreams you come to me.
- sometimes you are in soft focus.
- your face looks like the moon under water.
- you follow me with your eyes
- and make them move like lips.
- I think I understand you.
- each bubble breaks to express a word,
- a sound whole and literate
- on the surface of the river
- making its way to the ocean.
- other times you remind me of someone inebriated,
- also wet and swollen and tremulous.
- you take pride in your work
- and hold yourself with swaying dignity when I mention it.
- 2.
- I, too, am looking for work.
- I want something to do with my hands
- that seem so far away from me.
- but women walk by with dogs and I think they are priests.
- what chance have I, with thoughts like these? I’m too obscure to be mad.
- what chance have I to move even my own hands to my will
- when they reach out before I do and spend every day as if it were gold,
- and gamble away every night like silver?
- 3.
- I think this is what you tell me, my palsied, dropsy friends:
- hands are happiest when drawn to the work they do.
- 4.
- my guitar sits in the trees
- and the branches become the hands that play it.
- the wind writes the music.
- I, the musician, am the one who cries.