Interlude (25)

From May 2017, a poem that should be in this story. Perhaps it is Part 33.1, coming right after that despondent poem. Or perhaps it should be the very last interlude, when all is done. I’ll leave it here, for now. It was titled ‘Bury me with my dreams’ and the original post is here.

I don’t remember why I wrote this poem but I wonder if I chose to say ‘bury’ instead of ‘cremate’, which is culturally what would happen, as a longing to remain a while longer, as a protest or as a need to have somewhere to go and grieve – for those departed, for myself… either way, those dreams seem to want to linger.

Bury me with my dreams

bury me with my dreams,
old they may be, fatigued parchment
of a prayer book held too long,
held too tight,
what good will they be to you anyway,
incongruent with the living,
shroud them gently, each one,
this from the night we climbed to the clouds
on wires of lightheaded rain,
and that when the moon was complaining,
chiffon wave ears scattered on the sand;

I need their irresolvable yearning
in my hands when I leave,
their folly of attachment, of want,
their songs of erratic discord,
their roots are where our roots are,
deep in the earth,
in the echo of the ocean,
where every difference, every distance
folds into sublime equations,
why we fall out of love,
why we want to unwant by starlight,
why the improbable never pales its call;

it is the eccentric wind here, unhinged,
with its scent that stirs time,
shifting the balance, recalculating dreams,
bury me where the answers are,
with dreams that danced like mendicants in rapture,
that sighed like decadent harlots,
dreams that were spawned by awkward anticipation,
dreams searching for the lost variable,
dreams undreaming the end,
bury me where I can untangle them
hope by stubborn hope before they die.