in the morning i stand at the window, the steam from my coffee makes me squint—
i think about windows, portals, visions of dreams, of flying
away and above and beyond what we know, through fields of corn and poppy
riding on the back of pick-up trucks to watch fireworks and feel alive again
i think of you a thousand times a day,
i think a thousand things
about the dreams sifted through time
and memory
and heartbeats—
lives running parallel
on this side of my own reality
and in the alternate realities of thousands
when you visit my dreams, it’s eternally spring time and you walk around with your arms full of lilacs; from room to room you go, trailing their smell in long ribbons of sleepy memory that cling and linger long after awakening
“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…And one fine morning—
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
from The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925
how could i have known that i would dream of you night after night?
his memory
crawls into
her mind,
winding and binding
and finding a way
into her stilled
and hollow heart
floating yellow balloons
silver buckets of china dolls
tiny lemon cakes
hives in abandoned cars
bucks in the woods
you were then, the age i am now–
i think about this in the dark and
scoop your image from my memory–
your young children will be grown,
your hair, fully silver–
of course when i meet you in my dream later that night,
we are as we were–
and i am desired once again
he dreamt in layers,
in waves–
in the space between breaths,
between words,
between ragged heartbeats
“I awoke and it was still dark. I lay there for a time reliving the dream, feeling other dreams stacked behind it.”
Excerpt from M Train by Patti Smith, 2015
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