Sleep comes and wants to take us.
Where? I ask, but sleep doesn’t answer.
Dreams pouring the boiled kettle over frozen birdbaths.
Winter drinking darkness and fire, domino-ing subtractions.
The holiday misplaced its presents, your blue notebook of revisions, my new gray sweater.
The cold causing some to sing before the deer found us.
When the house gave up its shadows, we followed sun.
Cathedral rooms of snow, pages of blackbirds, sentences that don’t end, my sea-logged, sea-bird feather pen.
The apparitions on the first floor steal wax paper envelopes of stamps.
The golden Madonna staring directly into the camera lens.
Last night the protagonist of the story misplaced the magical horizon, followed the river’s ice-flow.
Given the chest X-rays, everyone dreamed the sickness away.
On last year’s footage, the mob’s delusions play out tragically until the end of a different book.
Rrecycle, re-use, re-group, re-focus.
Sea lily.
The hurt animal under the holly.
Victorian porch labyrinth.
Wrought iron bird cages and window boxes.
Don’t shovel the deck.
Tell them you’re preparing for someone else’s future.
Twilight loses its wing.
The dog sleeps in.