A COUPLE OF DREAMS

A COUPLE OF DREAMS

…So long I’ve dreamed/of climbing into a harness and zipping/across swaths of hidden forest, where/no one has yet catalogued the dream-shapes/of ferns and flowers beneath the canopy;/or dropping from a little plane with you—/one quick tug, and the pocket of silk/billows up like a mellow flame, its/rustle an ineffable name, to bear me/back down to checkered ground. --- Luisa A. Igloria, “Dear Recklessness, Dear Jeweled, Via Negativa, 09-03-11*

Before brittle bones buy you out

of a reckless dream tickling you pink,

before tired loins give up on you,

why not throw all caution to the wind? 

No flaccid arms should stop you zip

through virgin dreamscapes, nor fear

cut the throb pumping pure pleasure

bursting through your ecstatic throat.

Suns do not set here atop the trees,

there are only fierce blue skies staring

you blind as you dangle on your wire,

shrieking, eyes shut, your raucous cry, 

a wild howl of triumph over dread

that growing old leaves you graceless

among the willowy and the delicate,

a hapless hag on a throne of words. 

Why not a dive from that bright sky?

A tandem clutching each other, sure

of an embrace that will not weaken

even as you float down to the ground? 

Dreams are made of these: a soaring

to heights unknown, a mellowing

of flames, a folding of chairs at day’s

end, to wake up eager for yet another.

---Albert B. Casuga

09-04-11

(*From the poem written by Luisa A. Igloria on her 50th birthday, September 3, 2011.)