Wonder-ridden Song Rising from The Unsteady Waters of a Dream
After Ocean Vuong
In a dream I keep untangling from,
the vortex from which I emerge,
moon after crystal moon, like a wounded wolf of time,
I reach for the tapering hem of wonder & liquefy into mist…
Wonder as in lost magic—time sloughs off its spent scales
to reveal the nimble animal of desire slithering
into the room where I stifle the wings
of the angel of death to kiss her goodbye—
the memory(of my survival) blazing in her like a candle flame glowing
in a heart-full of darkness; the radiance of wonder.
Wonder as in a story too (c)old to remember—yet I remember;
In the winter of my life, in a splinter
of a fractured year, the iced road tattooed with cracks, the trees
all skeletons of their past—I fell, with great tenderness,
into the vastness of love. It must have been six-feet deep, the chasm that welcomed me,
for I saw, in the brutal shattering of mirrors,
the sudden death of fledglings—my heart, a tomb shaken by the echoes of its dead.
Later, in the hush of night, I would dream of her face, cupped
in my hands, crumbling like sand into the hourglass of my life—the blood-
shaded horizon calling me into the infinite wreck of all things.
Yet I want to believe that wreck is time’s recycling factory—
that what was once dumped can be made more beautiful
in the maker’s mould; like the paper scrunched in the magician’s fold
emerging as a plane coated in gold; the flexibility of wonder.
Wonder as in redemption song—once, in a house sodden with music, I stumbled,
like the drunk, into the tender embrace of a song.
Once, in a wonder-ridden dance, the rooms within me flung their dark doors open,
coughing up their storms—the storms quietening into
little puddles of water, the puddles evaporating in the golden light of the song.
That night, I danced toward the rim of insanity, almost falling
over, then, regaining consciousness, braced myself & started over.