la reve no. 4, in sepia

Are you invited or invited.

By now, I cannot say, only that you are there.

This much is undeniable.

They tell me, dreams are dreams are dreams, yet some prescience here.

I see you there, sheets twisted about your waist, a summer mess, window fan churning, churning.

No matter. The heat beads all about you anyway.

She rests there too. Three. Maybe two. Your child, only one, in your arm crook, her eyes closed,

somehow distant as if already part-way to somewhere, but not here.

And I, I am above all of this, on a step-stool perhaps, my camera set on my tall tripod.

Even the click-click of my lens does not wake you,.

No matter how close I zoom, it is never close enough.

The picture remains fuzzy. Almost unreadable.

One cannot quite get to the point of the matter, the heart of what beats in that deep chest –

where I know, love, an oven-bird nests and nests and nests.

So where is it that I develop such precious thing, such film? In my head? I cannot say.

…

All I see is the red light of danger – that tomorrow, all things will change.

I hear the clap and roll of distant thunder and know soon, ,there will be lightning, lightning and tears.

In my chemical trays the shot becomes clear, clearer, appears in tones of sepia, warm as the day was hot.

As I imagine your skin to the touch, burning and damp from humidity, your hair waving in the heat.

Sepia. All I see is this. Just sepia. Rich and warm as any day at the beach,

any day in the Bronx ; the city heat inescapable.

All I want to do is preserve this moment.

To maintain this still. To keep the snap of the photograph and hold you both there, suspended

In the lens of my camera such that tomorrow never comes. This much is possible.

But me, I am no god, no savior, just a girl with a zoom who sees all with an eye –

one green marbled iris that looks out to the world and sees what others miss.

They miss this. These rich tones of sepia, the hues that you cast off.

They see but do not see.

Such exquisite pain.

But with no exquisite relief.

*note, this poem is also in 'Other Poems'

This poem is sans doubte for evander and eliza.