Dreams and Wandering Ages

I will lay you down, sighing, upon the soft needles and cones

And cover you in sunbeams and the acrid smell of pines

And fall, restive, into the thousand year sleep of all the earth

With mountains beneath our pillows, pressed into the warm bosom of stone

With kisses and hard nipples shivering like diamonds in the open mouths of caves.

And we will stretch from that sleep of dreams and wandering ages

And with eyes still walking dreams, rise on redwood legs,

Curl our toes into the darkness of earth and send them sinking into aquifers

And stand there, our mossy hair and beards in the mist, waiting for the next empire,

Taking into ourselves the deepness of salt and foam and wade out into the

Watery, swirling forest like otters with our stones.

And if we tire of this, with the large eyed play of seals in the wavering kelp,

I will touch your breast with blood red deserts and sands like cream

And lay your feet beside them like coals in the empty hearth.

And I will place deep canyons in your body and fill them with

Smoke and Joshua trees, with mesquite and mescal and corn flower.

I will put the music of moons and the silent wings of bats in the saguaros

Into your ears and braid firelight and the desert's cold night into your hair

With night blossoms and the soft feet of foxes in the kisses of their sandy tracks.

I will tuck you into the tumbled blankets of plains and sage and sweet grass

Until we wake beside the rock pools of mountains and exhale the curling sulfur smoke;

Until we wake in steam and bayous and wander in the bellies of swamps

With egrets and cranes and the marching spirits of the parading dead.

And I will lay a glimmering strand of keys upon your neck

Like an endless summer evening on the cliff's edge of storm

And wash you on beaches in the rain that brings the stars back.

All of this I will do in the perfume of hot nights, in the glow of dawns,

With cypress and balsam, spruce, sycamore, dogwood and cherry

In the back of your heart like a fragrance, until your heart

Beats again in the time of orchards and wild things growing;

Until you are quenched of all things hungering and thirsting in you

And peace and contentment ride gently on you like a laurel and crown.

Eric M. Petit