Pieces of a Dream

An angle of darkness clings

to the window of my hut

it leans out into the night

butts its head against my head

flattens my restlessness

under its sloshing weight

batters at dawn's yellow-blue gate

Bouillon's castle resists the web

of coincidence and death

the world outside its walls

orbits as a monument

to medieval promises

of redemption and grace

vines cling to beleaguered chains

Across the moat St. Teresa

catches frogs in a butterfly net

the noisy creatures echo to her

the ugliness of the world

she shrugs off her anxiety

retreats inside her habit

turns water into ice

I take my morning rounds

the dull thud of my boots

keeps time with the dead

they linger unseen unwashed

a brute mass of shadows

spilling across the hall

toward silent battlements

Where will the outsider cross

the sulfurous waters to safety

where is my place among

swords and vats of oil

no one challenges my right

to wander these walls no one issues

an edict against my loitering

Teresa stuffs a toad with grass

metalsmiths a tiny cross

secures a necklace slips its around

the swollen throat squeezes hard

and hears its melodious call

beauty invades the senses

only to take root in the self

I will retrace my steps to the pilgrim way

I will rescind my vow to never look back

here on the neon slopes of Belgium's hills

I pick up my net swing it above my head

swoop down on Teresa's veils place them

beside the great wall's towers

scoop up the pieces of my life then dream