KS Culbreth

“It is Only a Dream”

I was a walking dream, dreaming as I talked and when I spoke
an angel’s wrath was mine
when the owls were swooping and calling down to me from peaks
the stars bright and happy and mean
your house dark, I came again, lame and limping
wounded and ashamed
“It is only a dream, only a dream, a dream.”

And sleeping, I was the running lame, leaning and bent
through broken glass I crawled
and dragged myself tattered and flayed beneath
the happy stars and coiled
around the pines dark and breathing
outside your window the glass shone
the silver of the moon
the moon a sliver of bone
“It is only a dream, only a dream, a dream.”

I was dancing then, alone, lonesome a wallflower
whose summer colors I adored
whose brilliant hues would neither wash nor fail
sure as stars as cruel a dread
as a true death-wish has ever found.
a child, foundling, on abandoned ground
was dancing with the dead who died
having never been born
the leaves were brown before I saw you again
when first you left, the summer was slain
and my blood was fouled with spleen
“It is only a dream! Only a dream, a dream!”

Far away a group was singing, chanting for the coil
that unwinds each year
like a child’s repeated sound, steady as rain, a call
to one the elders also cannot see, as your
audience of one, when you play, the chords
of piano strings, some untuned, unwound,
drifting through town.
the years, the years, dear Lord, the years
if this is never, I’d rather that dread
would rather realize the dead
“It is only a dream, only a dream, a dream.”

And now this reawakening, the cool dew upon our skin
Asperses us to life, colors of summer
about us again, cardinals and other bird kinds
of the day and of the heat, still, somber
but of the day at least and in the sun
that applies its rouge to those
who rogue out beyond the reach of night
one determined rage, for all or naught
forsaking the stars, the cold and mean
from darkness without a trace
into a love, into a trust
true because it will not change
the sunlight streams
and an envious angel slanders us:
“It is only a dream, only a dream, a dream.”