all the while we sleep

Chew this one slowly. Taking a pause. Be back later.


all the while we sleep
dancing in dream
someone is watching

over long fields of grass
through the great forests
lonely small animals search
for food, or the way to water
for a drink

in stillness the trees
hold their arms up
protecting those beneath
without question
the center of that world
the one unobserved

news sources don’t explain
that an old oak is near death
outliving its usefulness
because a child’s swing is gone
and no one will again
climb that high to tie new ropes

or that a great rock has rolled
for eons until the flaked gram is mistaken
for another piece of sand castle

while we sleep it goes on
in the personage of the milkman and baker
i remember the horse-drawn wagon
used once in a while,
painted red, and crawling down our main street
so that half-pints of cream would be there
chilled in the morning by
crisp, nose-pinching air

a stump has given way for a babe
a green shoot, that given half a chance
could grow larger than the parent
but probably won’t because of what is now
a poor location for a tree

june bugs and fire flies
not in number that we knew
no longer are they swept from the sidewalks
grasshoppers and dragon flies
aren’t about quite as they were
and violets, unceasingly underfoot
are less frequent

the hand-crank telephone
that slept in the shed
is gone to a collector
and given a price

the one-armed man
who rolled his own cigarettes
isn’t at the gas station in the afternoons
to tell us his stories
and his son has moved to the city

two-laners are multiplied
one-laners are grown over
and the last remnants of the old street car bed
are just gone

while we sleep one truck
slows in the snow
as furious windshield-wipers battle
to clear the glass
someone is looking, looking into a blue
and motionless night

glowing red barns
sporting tobacco leafs picture
and larger than life yellow words
are dirty grey between wide gaps
from board to board
the wind uses this place now
to hum through

but the grass still grows
short, thin and tireless to trampling
amid papers bags and candy wrappers
no matter
the unknown, never mown glen
harbors a curious ant
enjoying a climb up
and around
to seemingly nowhere

and the river still flows
where my brother and i
took the great canoe in search of ducks
but just as much, in search of adventure
that went with the south river brook

all the while we sleep
someone is dancing over our dreams
with you and i where we were
or might have been
another time and altogether

one day you will do the same
forever and forever ‘til forever