A Poem for Sunday Morning

 

From a map of windows and pavement cracks,

I built a shifting ghost town in my brain.

It was never the same, that town, because

It was built of the breezes that crept across

Every web and weed I had ever dreamed.

It was a dog's dream, perhaps, for all I knew

Were the bucket, the stoop, and the crippled bug

And the trembling threads in the nap of the rug.

Slight it was, and sweet, the bee-motioned air —

Ocean-scented — and the floating of trees

That led me around my deserted town,

Until speech detained me, and pulled me down,

And only a trace of one memory remained:

The endless streets, viewed from underneath,

Were not unsweet white and twisted sheets.

(This poem is based on my nebulous recollections of the patchwork of sensory impressions, 

woven together in a sort of pre-verbal fugue state, from which a very small child constructs his world.)