132. Two Faces of the Same Echo or View

At a bend in the Mohawk and sitting
on the south bank is what remains of
Adirondack Power and Light, four
unused smokestacks in a row and
a mien of ancientness, now used for
I can’t tell what, possibly storage, but
what the building is to me is a source
of dreams that this building inhabits
such as mine, where it appears from
time to time, as you might, but unlike
the building that was Adirondack
Power and Light, you speak to me
in these dreams even if I’m silent.

The body is sleeping but the mind
it keeps working, keeps working
things out, like what a word might
be used for or how it might be
abandoned by the poem for images.
My dreams are bodies of words,
words in the shape of people who
talk to me, words that cross a bridge
at night, words that come out of
your mouth, words about your talking
about yourself, words about your
own words, words about words and
the body of words the words make.

I hear you talking in my sleep, and
you are drawing what you are talking
about, and you are drawing yourself.
You draw yourself up into a ball,
and that ball is a fist that holds a pen,
and that pen draws the parts of
your body in the shape of a cartoon,
and every part of your body speaks,
certainly your mouth, but also your
hands and your cheeks and even
your feet, or at least one of them,
because you are a poet so you are
a person made out of words.

Memory every right of portion in a
variant station, lotion from the
manner of it, being so that there could
be, or be seen, as a matter of opinion
whatever reason its questions require
or what prerequisite knowledge
orchestrated the change, as if of the
seasons, or three ravens in a hemlock,
and their dark and raspy voices, never
a call but a croaking, creaking, jump
to branch from branch, rocking with
wind and weight and voice, the calling
out for no reason but shivering out.

That words might, in reduction to a
tighter sense of taste, sharper scent,
extend in the way that they restrict
meaning, shrink it back down to some
essence, a penis slipped into cold
water, what meaning might live so
small and wanting, always aching,
to grow, what growing could be made
of it, how it might expand, elongate,
cover more territory, take shape so
that it might better enter the mind
of some person, or that person, or that
particular person you meant to speak to.