Good, I said, because something inside me died—well, lots of things, angels.
Before I was born, much happened, this and that. I was an angel.
In my dream, my mother waited on the front porch, a long cool blue True.
The smoke smelled good, floated on the dream night sky, smudged the clouds, the tree line.
All my horned owl drawings taped to the wall let loose, swooped to the floor.
The narrow salt water Pines River ran beneath my old home.
In my mother’s dream, we’d both been angels on the tips of a moon’s cusp:
she, after she died, me, before I was born, though I can’t know that.
I came to visit my home again, turned the corner of the dead end—
saw my mother waiting on the rust brick front porch, cigarette lit.
In the bad dreams of the people who live there now, two angels flitted.
When I woke, I was sad enough to transform into a cold river,
into a blue vein winding around a wrist, a palm line to the heart.
