(April)

 

 

My ex-girlfriend and I were on the plane on the way

to a city, flying past the frozen clouds slowly enough

in fact so that I could examine their very motionlessness, which

included, I slowly discerned, a colossal stretched-out

male figure, the same color as the clouds, his arm wearily held out,

fully extended, the hand taking a fistful of cloud and

squeezing it in a futile gesture as we passed,

she not noticing,

and it then occurred to me:  angels must exist

for the creature was alive with a melancholy sigh, and I heard the
sound of a cloud as it was crushed in the giant hand like powdery
snow ¾ but now the plane accelerated and left the figure behind,
and we sped between a narrow row of skyscrapers heading

straight toward a line of others directly ahead. We can’t

make this turn, I thought, recognizing the events as a dream

and turning to tell my present girlfriend about the realness of it,

as I saw that she too was fabricated, and when I turned toward

the final, physical version from across the imaginary loft we

were trying to rent to people who didn’t exist, I knew that this

was yet another layer between sleep and April.

             

                                                                                                 1994

from  The History of the Invitation: New & Selected Poems 1963 - 2000