Dream Life

I was astride it, yes, like it’s my dream of life:
A madre de cacao patiently molded by knife,
Its head peeled and polished, its stiffened ears clipped short—
Anything that walks on two feet it was bent and made to sport.

I would gallop over hills beating hard my behind,
On the dry river bed, not far from childhood home;
O’er granite slabs tiptoeing, I’d nail equilibrium on
Both animal hoofs, or animal buttocks, or something of a kind.

Would kick the mounds of sand, the neat small piles of pebbles;
With pungent sweat they would mingle, lusty storms from such endeavors;
My great discovery it was that in little ponds or pools,
My robust horse could be a fish too, less trousers and underwears.

Back of tall river hedges, a pretender dressing room,
I almost bumped onto another kind, another horse like mine.
My equisetums did not whinny; and what else should I say?—
For we both left each other, swallowing our discomfitures.

Have now coffined all horses, my past equiponderances—
“Three pink dahlias, here,—brushed with last night’s mist—
Stealthily,—I’d rather say,—while the world’s not looking on,
With darling hands I whipped them from a rich neighbor’s garden.”



December 2, 2006, 9:36 a.m.
Rev. December 5, 2006, 10:11 a.m.