Wedding Dream


back in Virginia, back on a road my dream knows 
but likely never existed     mostly dirt, winding through maple and pine
till it gently unspools into a broad meadow     below me 
grass spills down into a steep valley, rickety wooden fence and narrow stairs
the revelers descend, led by the wedding party     I am with them, one of them,
bridesmaid or groom or disembodied dream     pulled 
deeper into the screen of trees, halfway between myth and memory, back to a green that tried for decades to convince me it meant home, earth shot through with clay red as a scab

                                          while my body lies breathing without me, beside a man 
untouched by that red soil     

here in the deep crease of my mind      this valley 
glows night after night     road patient and endless, a vein buried inside my eye     
thick with ghosts     this yearn     this quiet aching dream