Starry Dreams

                                                      

That lovely last verse! 'The sky was starry to the very rind...' (*sigh*)



Dreams - Linda Pastan 

Dreams are the only 
afterlife we know;
the place where the children
we were
rock in the arms of the children
we have become.

They are as many as leaves
in their migrations,
as birds whose deaths we learn of
by the single feather
left behind: a clue,
a particle of sleep

caught in the eye.
They are as irretrievable as sand
when the sea creeps up
its long knife glittering
in its teeth
to claim its patrimony.

Sometimes my father 
in knickers and cap
waits on that shore,
the dream of him
a wound
not even morning can heal.

The dog's legs pump
in his sleep;
your closed eyelids flicker
as the reel unwinds:
watcher and watched,
archer and bull's-eye.

Last night I dreamed a lover in my arms
and woke innocent.
The sky was starry to the very rind,
his smile still burning there
like the tail of a comet
that has just blazed by.