A long time gone, the old dream comes back: full grown woman, my / teeth fall out, into my hands, that ache in my gumline. / There was a time when I slept / with a crystal under my pillow / to ward this off. / Nightmare, I called it

I once admitted to my therapist that I didn’t think of myself as human but / as blue light radiating, suffusing every nook of the cosmos. He took this / as a good sign, the dissolution of ego

Wayward poet, heretic! / Do I mean to contend that scalawag / would be ceremoniously ushered / through the pearly gates by Peter?

petroleum set ablaze / brilliant halo / and a pale falsetto / would dazzle your / dragged eye by / its fatuous tail / but it / thuds the floorboard / so quickens the foot / blazing downstairs / you burst / past your porch / past your parked  / car past / the ghostly pond

I’d make sure to get ball-slammed immediately / so I could hide in a corner of the playground and dream about / the lovely winter storm that would be coming. Cheyenne got / them as early as September. I’d watch those huge snowflakes / land like feathers and transform the world into a crystalline / purity beyond dodge or ridicule. No two flakes were alike

and I tell her kerb stones must be straight, / tell her the lumps and bumps of roots / could trip up a man with a stick, that branches / can fall on a pram, leaves block a drain, / I tell her all the old make-believe / about why in the end they’re just trees / and praise be to her / for not believing a word