(For Sarah)
The last poem I will ever write
will be like the first dream I ever
wrote down, when I was green like a lawn
that did not know it was not the world,
I had gone to school and learned to be
a little angry argument machine
and all the dittos slept in the blue
light of filmstrips about the last war,
and we stood in line for the movie
about robots who saved everything
with the help of people that taught them
the essential importance of death
words they did not need to understand
but only speak when they faced the gate,
then I went home and read the stories
about Norse Gods and fell into sleep
with its unrealistic drawings
and never woke up until we met
and this was the dream I remembered:
mother and father were standing there
each wearing the faces of those ones
whose benevolence cannot be changed
by actions or time, they are constant
like a room that hides in an old book
you filled with wildflowers and sunlight.
2025