Dreams connect us,
Make us,
Bleed us slowly from the groin or neck of a great tree limb.
Ambidextrous branch loading with leaves-
The self-conscious numen of phenomenon,
The melt of hands, the ceasing of aspiration
As for a kiln with a brown pot inside.

Mexico and the borders of America strung with wire,
Stung with hurt and humiliation.
The automatons,
The matrons of consciousness
With black umbrellas and silver wheels
Like spurs spinning and crying like the dynamo in the dam.
The water tunnel and volts on high wires,
On our hands and knees in the desert.

On our own and worshipping,
Rubbing the stick and the stone of fatigue
Where the edifice crumbles
Like the red dust before the water rushes in
And turns us all to mud people,
Padding the bare ground
Or walking the tight rope wire, our girding,
Our baselessness and inability to be outside ourselves
Even with each other, bickering.

It’s a soft spot we have for another
As the final act of a salt dome in collapse.
It is where we take it from here-
Belly up in the warm Salt Lake or
The Dead Sea – all lined up like Kachina dolls or
Nested boxes red with Russia.

I saw you were waiting for me,
Believing in everything,
Rowing with all of your might
On a current of hotel room mattresses
And water slides and gore
From our reptilian ancestor curled up in the brains of our ambition, power,
Ritual to sum up neatly and move on
Like a yellow dinghy of humility.

Like a black widow spider,
A moving target in the temple of the mind,
The silent grove, the Saint and his bird pool
In the lap; St. Francis by a machine raking up leaves
Like cash, like mulch , like Salvation
From the quantum of ourselves to the great book
Beyond the shore, in the now, so splendid and compelling
That it must be spelled like baseball, basketball,
Goalie dropped from high to dead for a mysterious crime
Of the dark and the meaning of light, shining,
So ambitious, so sad, so temporary in our asking.

Ambulance chaser, basket maker of confines and last resorts
Of liberation and one more to come,
Trickling at the door.

By Rolf Stavig

Writing Through Cancer 4/24/24
No attendees but Theresa Knowles and the Dream Prompt.