it's a mute pond:
no crickets, cicadas, frog gulps.
no whisper of the water
my hand splashes in
and I can move through it noiselessly,
without a single noise,
or the thought of noise,
or even the memory of what noise
sounds like.
the woods around here
aren't familiar,
nor the shape of the banks outlining,
nor the trees, so high and bent,
bark like speckled stone.
but the night is.
the stars are the same ones
that hung around months ago
over Zoe's dock, nights before
we all went back to school.
they are the ones we watched
reflections of against the mirror
of water, our hair hanging
over the dock edge,
eyes upside-down.
I can't drown
in the dream-pond,
because water is like air
but it's heavier and feels warm
like blankets.
the funny thing is that down inside it
there is sound.
it's some song I heard
on the radio once,
I can't remember when but I know
the melody is off, sort of stretched
and distorted, but loud. it's like
plugging headphones in
when you slip underneath.
When I come up
I find a buzzing on my lips
and the buzz becomes a hum
which becomes a sound
which becomes a phantom of light,
the spirit of the song that existed,
and the ghost-hum shifts itself into a burning yellow,
multiplying like fireflies across the stretch of pond.
I press my lips together, another hum
which makes the lights broaden
until they look more like cannons of flame,
miniature-burning suns haunting
above the water and
shifting shifting shifting
until they go out.
awake with ghost-songs on my lips.
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