are you dreaming, Frederick?

"Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music--the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself."
--Henry Miller


"Time and Again"
Time and again, however well we know the landscape of love,
and the little church-yard with lamenting names,
and the frightfully silent ravine wherein all the others
end: time and again we go out two together,
under the old trees, lie down again and again
between the flowers, face to face with the sky.
--Rainer Maria Rilke


"Tape of My Dead Father's Voice from an Old Answering Machine"
He keeps telling me he's not at home,
that he'll reply soon. He doesn't know
he's lying, that what's hiding between the space
of words is space he's gone to. He repeats his name,
which is not the name I call him. I call him now,
hear only the unanswerable space answer. Home
is always where we've left, the space that means "before."
I know to keep his voice rewinding until the space
of now begins to answer. At the tone, I can't find a home
for how all space rewinds. Lying, I repeat that I am fine,
take out the home he was, and leave my name.
--Marjorie Maddox


"Villanelle on a Line from Macbeth"
Stay, imperfect speaker, tell me more.
I don't want the house, I want its ruins,
cracked panes, grandfather clock, paper-like door.

I want the vines that engulfed exterior walls,
petrified forests of books and manuscripts,
dust-filled afternoons that opened like doors

Onto Hesse’s wind-silvered fields, onto myths
surging up out of the earth. I want the man to say,
"Stay, imperfect speaker, tell me more,"

as he did at the end of every long conversation,
saying "imperfect" and meaning "unfinished,"
saying it always as I moved toward the door,

as I say it now, again and over and again,
I want the words to rebuild the house in shambles:
stay, imperfect speaker, tell me more.

I know: if I went back, there would be nothing
or worse: a new house, pristine, immaculate,
even the vine-filled library gone. I left and shut the door.
Imperfect memory, please, stay, tell me more.
--Michael Davis


"By the Round Pond"
You watch yourself. You watch the watcher too--
A ghostly figure on the garden wall.
And one of you is her, and one is you,
If either one of you exists at all.

How strange to be the one behind a face,

To have a name and know that it is yours,
To be in this particular green place,
To see a snail advance, to see it pause.

You sit quite still and wonder when you'll go.
It could be now. Or now. Or now. You stay.

Who's making up the plot? You'll never know.
Minute after minute swims away.
--Wendy Cope


"Alzheimer's"
Chairs move by themselves, and books.
Grandchildren visit, stand
new and nameless, their faces' puzzles
missing pieces. She's like a fish

in deep ocean, its body made of light.
She floats through rooms, through
my eyes, an old woman bereft
of chronicle, the parable of her life.

And though she's almost a child
there's still blood between us:
I passed through her to arrive.
So I protect her from knives,

stairs, from the street that calls
as rivers do, a summons to walk away,
to follow. And dress her,
demonstrate how bottons work,

when she sometimes looks up
and says my name, the sound arriving
like the trill of a bird so rare
it's rumoured to no longer exist.
--Bob Hicok