Valediction Forbidding Dreaming
After dreams, we feel our bodies
caving in, gravity taking hold like
thunder from some distant demolition.
There is no salvage, nothing wholesome
to come from sinking nightly into a swirl
of candy-cane light, a lapse in time
where Elvis works as a skin graft
therapist and Bob Hope writes poems
about Campbell McGrath. Consider
that Jesus wore a necklace of brown
wooden beads. Remember that 1950s
children prayed against Communists
in school. These realities, though dull
weighed against giant ghost sheep
and Snow White's Episcopalian slumber
are ablaze with the light of a world we
know, one which bulldozes its way
toward the bramble of stars, toward
tomorrow, toward a moment where the dead
might reunite with a bang unlike any
reactor core meltdown. Do not shut
your eyes and trespass on this holy
ground-wait for the Black Robes to come.
Wait for St. Peter, or the last Beatle to die,
or any angel with sense enough to burst open
the doors of Heaven with a single, shrill trumpet blast.
If life is anything, it's a clever lesson in patience.
caving in, gravity taking hold like
thunder from some distant demolition.
There is no salvage, nothing wholesome
to come from sinking nightly into a swirl
of candy-cane light, a lapse in time
where Elvis works as a skin graft
therapist and Bob Hope writes poems
about Campbell McGrath. Consider
that Jesus wore a necklace of brown
wooden beads. Remember that 1950s
children prayed against Communists
in school. These realities, though dull
weighed against giant ghost sheep
and Snow White's Episcopalian slumber
are ablaze with the light of a world we
know, one which bulldozes its way
toward the bramble of stars, toward
tomorrow, toward a moment where the dead
might reunite with a bang unlike any
reactor core meltdown. Do not shut
your eyes and trespass on this holy
ground-wait for the Black Robes to come.
Wait for St. Peter, or the last Beatle to die,
or any angel with sense enough to burst open
the doors of Heaven with a single, shrill trumpet blast.
If life is anything, it's a clever lesson in patience.
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