Forecast

Forecast

Listen, whatever it is you try / to do with your life /
nothing will ever dazzle you / like the dreams of your body
—Mary Oliver

Dreams flare like flamingos into more light.
Somewhere over blue fields is the form my spirit will go to when the dreams of my body have lived their separate lives.
Each star begins apart from itself.
Each moment is lost.
The sum of us is ponderable.
The dreamer, not the dream, is impossible.
I know your solid hands around me in the blue shadows of this tropical dusk.
I will never set down all that I carry.
But I feel I will when we balance the moon on a hurricane-strewn limb.
I am through considering ways for my body to revolt.
I am through with the debris of love.
With boarding up windows.
Escape routes.
I will swim into surf until it or my body tires.
Choose the strongest words upon which to build my thoughts.
Dispose of the weak loves of my past lives.
Split the atom with my resolve.
Want within reason.
Bear the unbearable into the eye's calm.
Rest and grow stronger until I have no choice.
I pray for each gull without favor.
Build a sturdy life from what is left.