I wonder sometimes if the dead dream and if so of what

Dead I would dream the sky and the sky breaking into flakes and falling 
gathering itself into fat drops plopping into summer dust the acrid smell rising

I would dream the sky shivered the sky repeated as blue eye staring back as mote in the 
forest dream walking past at dusk dream myself late coming home I would dream home

and my mother alive and also well

The scent of pine smell of snow the light brush of flakes like the softest touch of cold small lips

I would dream the way the woods mediate the wind the way something is always falling in the forest

The ways something is always falling & how that means everything falls

I would dream this gravity storm the rain the hail the way the ground waits for us all

I would dream the sticky soft lungs their rise and fall the heart doing its endless unimaginative dance the silence of the dead is not the silence of the living

I would dream the living owls calling across the wood so sure of whom they love and who loves them which is not the same thing but there they are naming the beloved for anyone to hear

I would chart a new map I would map the places the living go and where each one falters where each light dims goes out

& the map would be a map of the world just as it is now with the coastlines picked out in fire

& the living about to step into the dark water the lighthouse waving its flag of surrender the ships dipping and bowing as if the whole world were a ballroom as if

everything came down to dancing