The Dream of Reason. Jenny George

not clear

      where the hole stops

      beginning and where

      it starts to end.

      It’s warm and dark down there.

      The passages multiply.

      There are ballrooms.

      There are dead ends.

      The air smells of iron and

      crushed flowers.

      People will do anything.

      They will cut the hands off children.

      Children will do anything—

      In the hole is everything.

       I

       Threshold Gods

      I saw a bat in a dream and then later that week

      I saw a real bat, crawling on its elbows

      across the porch like a goblin.

      It was early evening. I want to ask about death.

      But first I want to ask about flying.

      The swimmers talk quietly, standing waist-deep in the dark lake.

      It’s time to come in but they keep talking quietly.

      Above them, early bats driving low over the water.

      From here the voices are undifferentiated.

      The dark is full of purring moths.

      Think of it—to navigate by adjustment, by the beauty

      of adjustment. All those shifts and echoes.

      The bats veer and dive. Their eyes are tiny golden fruits.

      They capture the moths in their teeth.

      Summer is ending. The orchard is carved with the names of girls.

      Wind fingers the leaves softly, like torn clothes.

      Remember, desire was the first creature

      that flew from the crevice

      back when the earth and the sky were pinned together

      like two rocks.

      Now, I open the screen door and there it is—

      a leather change purse

      moving across the floorboards.

      But in the dream you were large and you opened

      the translucent hide of your body

      and you folded me

      in your long arms. And held me for a while.

      As a bat might hold a small, dying bat. As the lake

      holds the night upside down in its mouth.

       Rehearsal

      Another morning, raw sun on the snow—

      the snow melted back in places, exposing the yellow grass.

      I almost forget what shame is, the birds

      coming down from the trees onto the wet, releasing earth.

      They take quick, strategic bites of it—what only they can see:

      seeds, tiny husks of insects frozen to transparency.

      Then they fly off all at once, a mysterious agreement.

      The great event—has it already occurred? Or is it waiting

      in the future and we are standing fragile in front of it?

      Or is it now, today—the snow crawling imperceptibly back

      from the grass, the sun burning a white hole in the sky?

       Everything Is Restored

      He swallows the last spoonful

      of prunes, their soft rapture

      in his mouth. Then the jar

      is washed under play of light,

      then the boy’s mouth

      is wiped with a cloth.

      He squalls for a moment, then

      stops. Everything is restored.

      Chime of spoon in the sink.

      The boy is lifted out of his seat,

      legs swimming in the slow

      element. A small seal.

      The kitchen ebbs and flows,

      sleek afternoon sunshine.

      Now the boy is placed

      in his crib, now he is slipping

      into the silvery minnows

      of dreams, a disorder of shine,

      particles of motion flickering

      beneath the surface.

      Harm will come. It’s the kind of knowledge

      that ruptures and won’t

      repair—an ocean that keeps

      on breaking.

      The day moves with the gradual logic

      of drowning. Evening fills the house.

       Oh, where are you? Where are you going?

      The mother folds up the ocean

      and shuts it in a cupboard.

       Death of a Child

      1

      This is how a child dies:

      His breath

      curdles. His hands

      soften, apricots

      heavy on their branches.

      I can’t explain it.

      I can’t explain it.

      On the walk back to the car

      even the stones in the yards

      are burning. Far overhead

      in the dead orchard of space

      a star explodes

      and then collapses

      into a black door.

       This is the afterlife, but

       I’m not dead. I’m just

       here in this field.

      2

      It made a boy-shaped hole

      and filled—

      the way a crushed hand fills

      suddenly up

      with new pain,

      or a well put down

      taps the liquid silt.

      The center pours

      toward the surface.

      Now the hand is given

      to the earth.

      The