Which Willow?

Which Willow?


That willow,  of course.  Made of all the blue pencils in the box
- of which there were five.

Done over several days and nights
when days and nights were spent this way
- could be spent this way -
and were.

Her pointillist willow
- made of Ultramarine for the full rich body
strand after strand, like braids made of particles,
and Paynes Gray
(spelled with an 'a')- there
where the branches scraped, in dots, unsure or tender,
against the Cerulean dotted grass.
Sky Blue, I think it was called, for the highlights,
the top, arching leaves where the sky blue moon hit it
in a dour Navy dotted sky.

And that was all
All the blues there were

Enough to make the gentle eyelets of the willow
bend, shimmering, towards earth
- some negotiable, dotted plane
that couldn't last
because the paper
was pulp, colored - baby blue.
Meant to be brief, outgrown,
and was.

And that was all.
All the blues there were.
Enough to speak of gifts
and time enough to let them speak
in dots, in blues
- just five.

That was all we had.
That was enough
for that willow, dabbled
- delicately -
there
and then.

In the dream

Maybe a fifth collection: In the Dream


To write of a dream at the end of a whole complicated day is maybe a bit unfortunate.  Has all but the meaning boiled off.?
Or just all of it - but the mammoth.

I can't forget about him.  The pure unbelievability of the size of that one breath that all day has puffed my hair back, on and off.


We (who?) are walking in a thin ravine, complicated at the opening end with something like rocks, giant forms.

I realize the form I was standing on, had hopped onto like a bolder in a ravine was the forward foot of a mammoth - not wooly, but like a giant (giant!) elephant, laying there, filling the ravine - dead. Unmoving.  Huge and dead.  So sad, now that we knew what it was.
But somehow I could sense his awareness.  I mentioned it, I forgot how, or to whom - something like: "He can sense us.  He knows.   He is alive."
and then, after a long quiet time,  the breath from the beast, altering my world.  Soon after the whole terrain that he was lumbered up and stood, towering, and he was escorted then by a golden lion, magic with magic, towards me as I had stepped back into the forgotten new bit of my dream.

Later - many details about Rebecca and her house in France. I saw every room.  (I'm excited to hear about that Friday!) It is a bit too rustic and lonesome and humble than I am ready for.  I could draw the room in its every cup.  But I didn't want the place.  It seemed to be just a room in the middle of a building.  There was an old man with a shovel outside. And the little town she walks - up through another ravine- to a place to dance.

And there, or nearby, a visit to the room of a student I am very worried about.  One of my absolute favorite students who seems so, is so, troublesomely ill and in the dream I was IN his own worry. There were very specific shapes and colors and dynamics to it: blue brown indistinct shapes, some string or ropes within that.  Something sexual, not between us, but in his thinking, but that was not the point. The experience was like being empathetic about all we can't really be empathetic about - what it FEELS like in someone else's mind, the solitude of our burdens and all our hours alone with them.