Sunday, Sunday

AND BY THE FACT ITSELF

From Conversations with the Virgin

 

Lady, my thoughts of you are as thin

as the skin on the backs of my hands.

The star in my lucid dreams you are

and it seems that I can’t even take a phone message

without automatically adding a reference to you.

Holy Mother, I once read

that those wishing to control dreams

should spend their last minutes of life

each night studying their hands.  You see,

 

and I know you do, that our hands are the things

we see more than others,

more than other objects,

more than other expressions, digressions…

more than thoughts throughout our waking sessions.

 

Ip

so

fact

o

 

when we see them

in our sleep, our deep subconscious minds design scenarios

in which we’re able to function as though we are awake.  And so

sound dreamers function in their sleep.

 

My eyes weep tears of blood

but slumber goes

the way of wonder

the way of distant thunder born of memory,

the way that gender

can’t explain

the differences between our legs, and so we run

and run and run like dogs asleep

and never still, we keep

the sacred pacts of childhood.