Dreamwriting

The way the river looks on windy days 
(we live a block away): white-capped, 
indigo-lined. Along its horizon, 

birds make V-formations, like someone 
inked them fast. The blur— illusion of
the years. To the left, rows of ship-

to-shore cranes resemble those all 
terrain armored walkers in Star Wars. 
These are, of course, for large

container ships hauling cargo to
the international terminal. I know time
sometimes is like a wading bird standing 

perfectly still on one leg in the shallows. 
Other times it is the clean dart of its beak, 
spearing a target beneath the surface. 

Yesterday my therapist told me I should go 
ahead and lean fully into my grief (this too 
has its own understory), so it might 

loosen by degrees. It's waterlogged, tight 
as a monkey's fist or heaving knot for casting 
rope from ship to ship or ship to shore. 

When I was in first grade, I used to have 
recurring dreams in which I hovered a few inches 
above a sheet which turned into a quiet billowing 

sea. I don't have them anymore, only the images 
fixed in memory. But I recognize the attitude: 
listening for a hush that isn't complete 

silence— filled instead with insinuations 
of sound and movement. Isn't this too 
a kind of reading, and the rippling a kind 

of poetry? Yes, I think these are some forms 
that help us. Or spirits, if that's how you want 
to name them. Dreams, for sure. But there's 

got to be something in you which knew it wanted 
to turn its face in that direction, which wanted 
to follow. How else could we have gotten here?