Moving

I wake in a strange room
in a strange city
delivering a funeral oration
or a lecture about rain.
All day the dream bobs
into view, sinks.
What combination of blown leaf
and jangled light starts
it talking?
If I could write down
its instructions,
I could fall inlove,
find meaningful work.
Outside, rain drills its pointers
into the ground,
informs
the roots. Dirt clings.
Rain streaks like stars
when a camera lens
remains open all night.
Why do I insist
on bronzing what vanishes?
To mimic rain’s
invisible circumference, change
as it does from silver points,
to damp tunnels,
to the white ideographs
of roots, to blank leaves
breathing rain back into the sky.

Emily Warn
“Moving” is from The Novice Insomniac (Copper Canyon Press, 1996).