A Place of Morning by Luis Garcia
painting
by Jane Booth
A
P L A C E O F M O R N I N G
He woke
in the middle of his favorite dream
thinking
to dream this dream once more quickly.
The quickness
with which the whole thing
as he
now called it had occurred truly amazed him
a maze
of events all taking the shape of a single story
or in
this case a single dream.
So now
he comes to this morning, this place of dreams,
still
morning. Now the sound of a bell
takes
shape in the distance. Now a stage
and a
series of events take their shapes from shapelessness.
And so
the dream itself continues.
Empty
places, traces of a cold wind,
a movement
toward a place of morning,
a moment
there to dream of other mornings—
And so
the other mornings also come and go,
one inside
the other. And so this morning
also comes
and goes deep inside itself,
a place
of dreams, a place of other mornings.
Now he
wakes inside another place.
The time
is morning. The house is cold.
A cold
wind traces a pattern
across
the windows of yet another house.
Outside
in the dark trees bits and pieces
of sunlight
suddenly appear.
Now a
sunlit room and the presence
of another
person moving in that room
also suddenly
appear. This place, he thinks,
this place
is truly a place of morning.
T H
E S T A I N S
for
Pam and Barbara
The black
and blue stains
force
their way
through
the green veins.
The leaf
of my disbelief
falls
to the ground.
It barely
makes a sound.
A bell
of water begins to toll
at the
center
of an
invisible bowl.
Now I
can see the birds of night.
Now I
can understand their mysterious flight.
Now I
can hear their dark call
as they
quickly disappear
into the
morning light.