Everything We Need

The Flying Dream

At breakfast you tell me your dream:

You are swimming in the ocean.

It is warm and calm. You move

effortlessly, like a ray.

the way I fly in my dreams

Soft water glides along

your skin in a caress.

You shimmer. Kelp touches

you like a lover’s fingers.

it’s becoming my dream

You have no need to breathe.

Amazing fish, coral, sponges,

anemone all welcome you.

The undersea joins you in dance.

like the music in my dreams

But when you surface you see

only water and sky. No waves

point the way to an invisible

shore. Nobody comes to

where am I?

your rescue. Nobody hears

the calls you don’t make. In

the giant ocean you find yourself

lost, alone, complete, serene.

At the Movies

You walk into the movie late.

You are not sure why the tattooed guy

is so angry at the old guy

who might be his father,

and why he winked at the girl

on the elevator.

Not sure who are ex-lovers,

who the tattooed guy is whispering to

on his cell phone,

why the cute blonde is mocking him,

or what anyone does for a living.

Everyone seems upset about something.

At night they all meet at a restaurant.

“You can’t get away with that,”

the old guy says.

The others seem to agree.

His apparent wife nods, drains her glass,

and heads for the bathroom.

They all leave. It’s raining. They go off separately.

You feel you should be taking sides

and check the lighting and music

for a clue about how to feel.

This happens to me every day.

            Everything We Need

The deer snorts and I turn, in my hand

a just-sprouting-legs tadpole moments ago

raked from the pond while I scooped

string algae, and as I glance from tadpole

to deer’s antler nubs, reddish coat,

flanks thin from a cold spring, and he

stares back at me, bends to nibble

tiny buckthorn I should pull from the woods,

and he grazes past the poison ivy I sprayed,

ferns moved up from the fen to behind

the hickory tree, and I say, “Stay, but

don’t eat the flowers,” the cat emerges

from behind the woodpile, creeps

closer to the buck, who looks from me

to the leaves to the approaching cat

and then back to the leaves he snatched

from the redbud we were hoping to save,

and his jaw moves narrow and loose

as he stares, chews, stares, looks back

at the stalking cat, lowers his nose to her,

a tawny white calico blending with

the reddish tan deer, both enclosed

in deep green shadows, dark brown

path and woodpile, vertical rainbow

of gray, brown and green trunks,

diagonal sunlight slicing the air

of our woods, and I balance

our whole life in this one moment

then drop the tadpole into the pond,

and the buck carefully walks away,

lifting his feet high, and the cat

follows him, until all that remains

is everything we need.