Asleep, you are a forest
crossed
by deep rivers. What I know of you
breathes down at the tap root;
your body turns heavily, a drowned
log. The pale bed, restless as a moored
boat, floats on the floor’s dark flood.
You say you don’t remember
dreams,
only a knife moving in the air, a drum
beating, a word said by a strange
figure. I am afraid to see the eyeballs
move under their lids. I will be a mouse
and sidle along the mopboards.
I know how the door tenses
when
you moan. The room recedes into its
corners. Your waterfalls and tidal waves,
the plunge and plum dark of your
deepest sea--you descend alone.
Your palm is an anemone.