from The Dream Quartet

Sit in the garden and regale me with stories of happiness and magical birds.

Summer folds its pages of garden light into miniature phosphorescent swans.

The cardinal nests between your vertebrae—resting before winter and frozen birdbaths.

There would be invitations to Celtic ceremonies, holy stones—before the catbird leaves.

The Monarch is a semicolon.

I didn’t weed enough—I tried to explain, compete with myself.

The invitation arrived, but it wasn’t addressed to me.

You misplaced the tempo in sleep and couldn’t resurrect accordingly, he said.

We’ve made adjustments to your hard drive to bypass the dearth of manifesto.

Your spiritual stenosis might entail surgery.

The book said, you need me.

You lost the passcode to yourself.

There’s no flowchart for teal and orange feelings.

Art is an emergency—memories of poems stuck in poplar trees.

We were supposed to be happy on page 11.

Dread was a horrible neighbor.

Love couldn’t always teach how to love.

Take your oxygen first before trying to save another who might arrive in time.

If the tree falls on your car, someone might find you.

Sometimes it’s required to play dead to become whole again—

before receding into someone else’s daydream without receipt.

Summer seemed a wash even without enough rain.

I implored the dog to get better.

My idiosyncrasies were proliferating until I became fractals at the dream’s shoreline.

I broke the kaleidoscope with my greedy hands.

The black bear ate all the bird food in the garage but dreamed of fish in the river.

The book of questions burned through the night.

When the priestess arrives, she’ll say—it’s not too soon.