Sandman
 

Three red birds alight on a sill working the night meant for those who sleep dead away any pretense, for whom the slightest shift of a curtain throws inside adrift. Here, the keen edge of your cynic’s heart, saying the grander the dream the grander.

I’ll continue to sleep even as you shoo away these birds and brush off remnants of their night song. I understand what you offer, rarer than the scree of an eagle / the intentional brush of limb on limb / your body lifting / you intentional, you unadmitted dreamer, these birds swirling around our bed now and you giving chase, prolonging.

If I understood thought to wing fought off / every breach of light caught in the act of revealing some fragment we were unaware of. There were birds, but more than that: something pulled you in through its dark eye until every shift of moment reflected back on itself the way mirrors will show themselves and show again the depth of the unreal / did I witness this / did I see more than a pronounced hump, this birdsong, this late hour, a blending across lines drawn by that part of us unwilling to forego solid touch.  

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Scott Hartwich lives in Bellingham, Washington, where he drives a little bus to make ends meet. His work has appeared in Diagram, Cue: A Journal of Prose Poetry, and Colorado Review, among other journals. He is the co-editor of Greatcoat, a new journal of poetry and creative non-fiction.
E-mail: sahartwich at gmail dot com  

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autumn 2007 | kaleidowhirl
books and chapbooks from authors in this issue