TWO BUTTERFLIES

 

Chuang Tzu's Dream written by Jendi Reiter

All this morning I dreamed I was awake

and then awoke to find I'd been sleeping,

time and again. The world we know

is a butterfly's dream

yet Nature squanders millions of golden wings

in a single tempest.

 

And in another dark dream,

I was searching for a book of deeds

in an official hall

near demolition --- such a place

as taunts me with a familiarity

just beyond reach, like the knowledge

of how to awaken when I know I'm dreaming ---

but only moths spiraled upwards

from each cast-off chest.

I could not read them, and yet I knew

their tissue-paper wings

bore all that could be written

away into the opaque air.

 

Ah, in the vacuum of space

the earth is suspended

like an audience's disbelief.

To any eyes out there it might appear

to rest on nothing, to descend from nothing

but a dark infinity

curved like the rare arc of a well-lived life.

Yet, like an insomniac's eyes,

this curve cannot stay closed:

the boundaries of space perhaps forever

fly faster and faster apart

from its unknown center.

A cloud of butterfly planets

flung forth by Nature

into perishing ice, flame or forest.

We struggle in a dream uncompleted

and wake, we imagine,

only because some greater mind

(at least for now) sustains the world's illusion.

 

 

 

Done