Napping and Dreams

Napping
February 21, 2010
5'' x 8''
Pencil, coloured pencil on paper

i/
Dreams

of reading together, glorious uprooted passages

purring through the cave of your belly to my ear,

through the cavern of my larynx to your fingers on my throat. Know what matters.

Know that the pattern,

the precise colour of late-afternoon sunlight from the south,
pollen-yellow,

faintly apricot,

I will not say gold,

is so much more essential.

ii/

Know these things,

and why I want to live here.

Know the purpose of a canvas on the floor.

Know that doors opening inward

only beckon. Know that

the ladder on a balcony only ever leads up,

while the mountain only ever leads down.

Know which streets call us away,

and which ones bring us home,

and which chords are always warm,

and which words heal me.

iii/

Know the reasons I sit up late

in the front room, barely rocking,

watching early-rising walkers on the street,

with a paintbrush in my hand.

Know the textures of the floor against your back,

against my thighs, sitting childishly,

while everything important

hangs in the air between us.

Everthing important,

in the ocher coloured air.

iv/

Dreams, sienna dreams

of henna tinted home. Words flow.

And in the early morning, have I woken?

Have I slept?

Does it matter? Mist is fading.

On the street, the early walkers

hurry out against the thinness of the day,

but you won't rise for hours:

'Below the thunders of the upper deep . . .

The Kraken sleepeth.'*

And so, until the end of days,

or else this afternoon,

which I would argue is even farther off,

the sun and I are lovers without you.

v/
A room for dreaming outward,

and one for dreaming in,

and all the other moments of our house, in the spaces in between.

* Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 'The Kraken,' in Tennyson (Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 42.