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Dreaming Myself
- Red Hen Press
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179 deborAh nodler rosen Dreaming Myself Waiting for darkness and a place to shine— darkness restores what light cannot repair, stalks the perimeter of an enormous dream. We dream our way back— Home’s the place we head for in our sleep. My life, this shirt I want to take off. Why do I long to be devoured and to forget in life rather than in death The ancient war between obsession and responsibility? Today is always gone tomorrow; nowhere is all around us. The cries of those who vanish might take years to get here For entrance can never be the same as exit. don’t waste your time with recollection or prophecy, Our hands want to plant something that will bloom tomorrow. Our deep human labor to become spirits; Our almost vegetal need to be reborn. All with our feet bound stiff in the skins of the conquered. I have had it all and want it back again— Time in its transparent loops as it passes beneath me now. 180 The fear of death is as ubiquitous as light. It illuminates everything. Trembling in anticipation of first petal-fall, announcement of death’s commencement, Which leaves us finally tattooed and senseless trembling on the stair, For it was, we eventually came to see, the sound of our own perishing. Like what we imagine knowledge to be: dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free. It is not the fire we hunger for and not the ash, It is the still hour. I crave those voices dreaming in my sleep. ...