In my dream of it nothing is 
            where it should be. The puzzle of the horizon 
                        shatters. We gather the pieces. 
Wood moths try to fill the spaces between 
            branches. The bulbs we planted  
                        have already broken through. 
Is this a dream or a memory? The wind stretches
            itself into a thin string that wraps itself 
                        around these words. Clouds 
wrinkle like crepe paper. No, this must be a memory. 
            A swing saying yes then no from 
                       the bomb’s concussion. 
What bomb? There were too many to count, too
            many places it fell. Its own words
                        not yet invented. These dreams
sleep like palimpsests in ancient manuscripts.      
            Not even the monks deciphered them.
                        Did I say dreams? Is this the past 
or the future? Moles keep burrowing their ancient
            questions in the yard outside. All right,
                        then, this is now. Riding over
the potholes of memory The beginning never ends.
            The end is sealed. We put the best face
                         on it, invent a new mask of words.
Climbers know, only the crampons hide the secret 
            of the rock face. The world is everything 
                         that is the world, one philosopher
says. The universe is a hologram we keep copying from
            one generation to the next, another says.
                        We don’t see what it is we are.
In a few millennia the sun will sift its ashes through
            whatever is left of wherever we were.
                         The moon will shatter like one of
those Sweet Gum pods. That is no dream. It is
            a memory pasted in the heart’s scrapbook.
                         Hartley thought our dreams were
the heart’s garbage dump. There are two owls outside
             taunting each other, which is neither dream
                         nor memory. It is now, when far from
here someone has driven a car into a crowd to say
            something he doesn’t understand. You have
                        to learn to love him if you hope to
ever stop the death of your own heart, someone prayed
            later from the crowd. And so it is, only now
                        do I begin to see how all this is 
connected. The past is always something just pending.
            Every moment strays into another history
                         In this way, too, the heart echoes
its own forgotten stories, as this evening, what prompted
            all this—the fading, high pitched scream of 
                        the rabbit some coyote had carried away,
the sound knifing its way through these memories,
            through the tendons of lost words that showed
                        a way to love, finally, this flawed world.