TO CATCH A DREAM

TO CATCH A DREAM 

At the woods’ edge, the yellowest birch seethes with small birds—kinglets, I think. But by the time I fetch binoculars, the tree is still.---Dave Bonta, The Morning Porch, 09-23-11

The yellow birch tree quivers

from the sudden ambush

of twittering kinglets flitting

noisily from fenced-in trees

at the wood’s edge: it relieves

me of an ennui I have nursed

with the frigid gust of an early

equinox. I shrugged: Leaves

returning to shorn branches. 

The moving colour burst jolts

me out of the gloomy confines

of a hell I created out of cabin

doldrums and infernal rainfall.

How can all this beauty waylay

this grim desire to find a still

point whence I could abandon

a plague of hoarded loneliness? 

I must get out to catch myself

a dream: Where has it gone,

that bright touch of memory?

How can I lead it out, set free?

A hapless Orpheus who must

not look back at my Euridyce

come back from doom? I turn

around to look at the birds,

but the tree is still and green.

--- Albert B. Casuga

09-23-11