The Morning After
All these dreams
I've been seeing lately
images from old friends,
long dead
Star Trek episodes,
plots for murder stories
that make sense when I wake up
to take a leak, then
dissolve into confused nonsense
come morning.
This poem tries to ride the backs
of these dreams, hoping it will go
forward to some island of delight
where Jean Luc Picard, in 23rd century
captain's uniform, engages my depressed friend,
Paul, in conversation beneath palm fronds
and coconuts.
I stand on the beach watching
as this poem comes washing ashore
tucked into a corked green bottle;
it is a treasure map.
Then I look again. No. A Rosetta Stone;
when I hold it to the sun,
I see the invisible writing that decodes this scene
for me, for Jean Luc, for Paul,
for the palm trees,
and we rise like the trade winds,
like the skeletal palm fronds,
like the vessels that we are,
into the sun, into the sun.
by Paul Totah 10/26/97