WORDS WRITTEN WHILE ASLEEP

I am standing in the open.
Pine tree with one white heron in its crown.
High above Stephen’s Creek where I used to wade naked
in the green water,
I have come through fifty years of undergrowth to be
here.

Come to the field where my grandfather grew crowder peas and water melons
as a cash crop.
Come back to the green woman lying on her back,
a few plowed ruts still showing faintly on her belly.
Her head is near the road where the oak gate has rotted.
Her feet are cooling in Stephen’s Creek.

But this is a dream.
I walk a hundred yards deeper into surrounding oak trees
looking for one acorn among ten thousand others to carry home.
All of us are blazing up from the ground lit by their own existence.

This is all I am and ever want to be.

.