“Poetry is a dream made in the presence of reason.”
—Adam Zagajewski
I went for a walk with a girl I hardly knewwhen I was a boy on a trail by a riverfor a film I didn’t know wasby a director I couldn’t see or hearbehind his hidden camera in the cloudsand trees as we recited our linesunwittingly with no idea of the plotor ending as we walked for milesin that paradise of a park, which is whywe were on that cerulean dayin a way that was more real than the trailitself, which has been razed, I’ve heard,for a housing development, which meansthe world in which we live todayhas become an illusion since we bothstill walk that trail where we were borna second time in a paradise we walkto this day in our heads, althoughit’s no longer there, despite the fact it seemsmore real than when we were thereenchanted with each other, strikingour tongues against our teeth to lightthe tinder between our legs and earsand then our hearts that needed proofof fire in the air as we walked like ghostsuntil we were lost in a grove besidethe trail and lay down somewherewe could never find our way back toand made love on a bed of mossdespite our fear; where we were eternalizedin the film which we continue to screenas a non sequitur in quotidian moments,like right now on the patio where webalance our dinners on our kneesand divine the darkness behindour eyes to dream awake of that timewe disappeared into a vast which playson the screen that hangs from a cloudon which our short that is so longis projected in color one day and blackand white the next, transcending timein the way it did that day on our walkbeside a river in which we witnessedenough of heaven’s fire in its waterto weld our memory of that ecstatic walkto a vision that would last in the grassof days we called forever, althoughwe are deluded by the film that hasno credits for the sake of heavenand witnesses in its showings to the ironyof a metaphysics that surrenders loveand even the river to sweet oblivion.
