by Mary Oliver
All night
the dark buds of dreams
open
richly.
In the center
of every petal
is a letter,
and you imagine
if you could only remember
and string them all together
they would spell the answer.
It is a long night,
and not an easy one—
you have so many branches
and there are diversions—
birds that come and go,
the black fox that lies down
to sleep beneath you.
the moon staring
with her bone-white eye.
Finally, you have spent
all the energy you can
and you drag from the ground
the muddy skirts of your roots
and leap awake
with two or three syllables
like water in your mouth
and a sense
of loss—a memory
not yet of a word,
certainly not yet the answer—
only how it feels
when deep in the tree
all the locks click open,
and the fire surges through the wood,
and the blossoms blossom
Photo Credit: Dream, SEPhillips, Digital Photo, 2009.