After Afterlude

The leather boats lift themselves

away from their ropes on easy hinges.

One passes the land of the dead

on the bus into town. One returns

from the root of the sky covered

in icicles. I focus on their glasslike

feel, their crystal breathturn.

What do you mean, I am rapid,

flying on breathways? No one

really dreams any more, the bread

of the dream, the haste of the dream,

yet anyone who awakes has overslept

the look of night, grass

written asunder.

My heart passes through the pause,

the whirring woods, the nettle message

of the ghetto-rose, that petalless flower.

I imagined God as a book, not

where you cannot be, eternalized,

non-eternal you, reader in the after

world, dropping your ghost-rosary.