The Dream

                                      After Chagall

A man grips a woman by the shoulders
On a bed in the open air, a courtyard
With a wall no taller than their knees stopping
No one from getting in or seeing them there
In the middle of a town blue as the sky,
An anxious overcast blue, both of them clothed,
Both of them solemn and seated, halfway
Between sleeping and walking, love and goodbye.
A man with wings glides towards them with all
The speed a painted angel can muster—
That is he moves not even an inch,
Only wishes to, such the conundrum of dreams,
The dreamer paralyzed as he acts, eyes flitting
Beneath their lids. Why does he embrace her
Like this, poised for something closer but also
To shake her into sense, you don’t ask
Because you know, have found the answer
Still in your head as before you lost consciousness
In one world and regained it in another,
The dream a warning that comes after
Catastrophe, a ripple in the waters of sleep,
A tremor in the voice of breath, visual
Echo, the mind reminding itself. Stubbornness
Disguised as hope, the dream expects the body
To revolt, do something, anything, miracle
As a compost of facts. I want you, he says
To his wife, and the angel never arrives
With the message of ruin, which is ruin
Without the flames, the soul immunizing itself
Through a little grief, the dream one of them
Wearing the wings of time and not arriving
In time, not going back in it, budging
A single second. But in the dream, it’s 1939,
The world about to lie back and die,
Let the Jerusalem of the body fall
For the ten thousandth time, and afterwards
You’ll wake, you’ll dream it hasn’t happened yet,
Hasn’t happened, everything real, everything right.

                                                          —David Moolten