If a Person Visits Someone in a Dream, in Some Cultures the Dreamer Thanks Them
        in memory of Reginald Shepherd

Dear Reginald,
It is morning.
I sit at a table
writing a letter
with a needle and thread.

*

I pricked my finger         A pelican
out of her migratory path,
even her language family—
whose child is gone
yet she absently pecks at her breast.

*

I write on the bedspread
I am making for you there
May you breathe deeply and easily.
If a person visits someone in a dream,
in some cultures the dreamer thanks them in the morning
for visiting their dream.

*

I call it dream
not that I am drawn to that which withdraws
but to him pearled, asleep, who never withdraws.

*

At a hotel in another star. The rooms were cold and
damp, we were both at the desk at midnight asking if
they had any heaters. They had one heater. You are
ill, please you take it. Thank you for visiting my dream.

*

Can you breathe all right?
Break the glass        shout
break the glass         force the room
break the thread       Open
the music behind the glass.

*

Remember that blue vine?    Grown
                            alongside the gate

fourteenth century
                        Venus close as the moon

the bowl of the skull    turning here
                                          lifting that

Copyright © 2009 Jean Valentine All rights reserved
from Break the Glass
Copper Canyon Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission