The Bleeding of Dreams

Dean Charpentier

for Andrea Gibson

“Who possesses a perfect soul?” — Rimbaud

I am reading Rimbaud on

my porch when I hear you have died.

It is a thick July morning.

The ceiling fan stirs a slow potion of

lazy haze and the slow sun efforts to

rise above the trees. The leaves

are a muted green and gold. Tired birds sing.

My soul is patched and stitched

together, much of the mending amateurish

and clumsy, but there is evidence

here too of your deft hand,

your words woven into thin threads,

sutures to stop the bleeding of dreams.

It occurs to me that you are

the answer to the poet’s rhetorical question:

to remove the border between life and death

is to traverse the invisible horizon

at the ocean’s end on a moonless night.

I am learning. I wield

the delicate needle of your wisdom

to sew up the hole you’ve left in my world,

only to discover you’ve beaten me to it.