We Dream The Dreams Dreaming Us

You say we should wait— 

It must have snowed all night or season,  

 

we don’t seem to know  

and there isn’t a clock; 

 

I say then  

 

we should  

 

wait, I  

trust you. 

 

The white page is blank outside;  

we haven’t heard in days. 

There is not enough time for a whole new plot. 

 

Inside, the wax dilates  

wide around the candle.

 

We sit in the dark

and wait

 

and are separate,

 

but looking at each other—

Credit

Copyright © 2022 by Brian Tierney. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 31, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.

About this Poem

“The title is borrowed from Shangyang Fang’s excellent first book, Burying The Mountain, and I loved the possibilities it opened with the complicated concentricism of its claim. Like many poets, liminality interests me. Dream or reality, present or future, snowstorm or apocalypse, prophecy or experience. This is the end or the beginning. This is the new phase or the final phase. Though, really, binaries break down in the face of the potential for love, which can correct and redeem all that we have done to the Earth, and to all earthly life, and, most especially, to each other. Not simple, sentimental love, but the good, hard love that requires believing each other to be worthy; the love of sitting quietly together in a quiet room in a turbulent time—interpersonal togetherness as a starting point.”
—Brian Tierney