Where No One Follows

...because of the nostalgia for dreams...

Because the bed is crowded with more and more children,

and the ghosts and angels of their nightclothes are wound

around and around my arms and hands,

And the press of my husband's longings chokes the river of sleep,

and no bed is wide enough for the storm of sleep thought,

and the storm floods the banks which are the walls

Of a room too small for the rage of the river: therefore,

I wake to a house of walls dissolving in the rush

of the river where no one follows me, where

I walk alone beside the wide river, and since there are

no shoes light enough for feet of a woman walking

to the river alone, and the terrible and

The sorrowful and the lonely there are mine alone, and

because mine, alone, is the name of that river,

I look back to the bodies of my husband

And children, sleeping deeply, and the stars pour light

on their foreheads and pillows, where I leave them,

I leave them every night in dreams.

I look at my hands and feet and the water of the river

rinses them in darkness. I am a new creature

of darkness. I am unrecognizable even

To myself: because the moon is only half of itself;

because the stars multiply; because the fish

dream of water, the stones dream of fire;

Because my hands each mirror the other, and each rib

is a bridge to the other side of the body. In the country

of sleep, the night is sovereign, and a black sky

Is the double of the day. There I will never wake

again: because the spell I learn by the river is

my own secret, and I remember it only at night.

Copyright University of Nebraska Press 2001
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