As a Blow, from the West

Names for the moon: 
Harvest; and Blue; and 
Don't Touch Me—

and Do. I dreamed I had 
made a home on the side 
of a vast, live volcano, 

that the rest was water, 
that I was one among many of 
no distinction: we but 

lived there, like so many 
birds that, given the chance 
not to fly for once in 

formation, won't take it, or 
cannot, or—or—but 
what of choice can a bird know? 

Down the volcano's sides, 
in the pose of avalanche 
except frozen, and so 

densely it seemed impossible 
they should not strangle 
one another—yet they 

did not—grew all 
the flowers whose names 
I'd meant to master; 

it was swift, the dream—so 
much, still, to catch 
up to—though I could not 

have known that, of course, 
then: isn't it only in 
the bracing and first wake of 

loss that we guess most cleanly 
the speed with which what held us 
left us? In the dream, the world 

was birdless, lit, yielding, it 
seemed safe, which is not to say 
you weren't in it. You were, but 

changed somewhat, not so much 
a man of few words, 
more the look of one who 

—having entered willfully 
some danger, having just returned 
from it—chooses instead 

of words his body as 
the canvas across which to 
wordlessly broadcast his coming 

through. We lived 
in a manner that—if it 
didn't suggest an obliviousness 

to a very real and always-there 
danger—I would call heady; 
it was not that. Think, 

rather, of the gods: how, 
if they do in fact know 
everything, they must understand 

also they will be eventually 
overthrown by a new order, 
which is at worst a loss 

of power, but not of life, 
as the gods know it. I was 
not, that is, without 

ambition: the illicit, in 
particular, I would make it 
my business to have studied; 

and of that which is gained 
easily, to want none 
of it. Flowers; names 

for the moon. It was 
swift, the dream, the body 
a wordless and stalled 

avalanche that, since forgivable—
if I could—I would forgive, poor 
live but flagging, dying now 

volcano. And the water 
around its sides receding with 
a dream's swiftness: everywhere, 

soon, sand and sand, a desert that, 
because there was no water, 
and because they missed it, 

the natives had called a sea, and 
to the sea had given a name: 
Friendship, whose literal 

translation in the country of 
dream is roughly "that which 
all love evolves 
down to" — 

Until to leave, or 
try to—and have drowned 

trying—becomes refrain, 
the one answer each time 
to whatever question: 

what was the place called? 

what was the house like? 

what was it we did inside it? 

how is it possible that it cannot be enough to have given 
up to you now the dream as—for a time, remember—I did give 

my truest self? why won't you take it—if a gift, if yours?